Customer Reviews

The Hard Way: Stories of Danger, Survival, and the Soul of Adventure

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an enjoyable collection of Mark Jenkins' articles for various outdoor magazines. Jenkins shows an often morbid tilt to his writing and covers his death-defying adventures in many different types of extreme sports. The best articles here include "Hitching" about the lost art of hitch-hiking, "Ego Trip" about how an adventurer can make stupid decisions even if the quest is successful, and "From the Mouths of Babes" concerning the pursuit of extreme outdoor sports with little kids. Also enjoyable are Jenkins' tales of his dozens of severe injuries and his exploits with his equally danger-prone father and brothers. This collection is a little thin but it's quite an enjoyable look into the heart of adventure and why people do it.

If you are expecting a rip roaring adventure tale when you pick up this book, perhaps something like Capstick's "Death in the Long Grass", you are in for a gentle surpise. This not the thrill-a-paragraph replete with death, near death and glory. Rather Jenkins seems to explore the parts of the adventure that the adventure seeker loves. Not the adreniline, but the friends, the travel, the beauty, the joy of the outdoors. By the second half of the book, you get to the adventure and daring, but even then with a lightness of touch that made me relish it even more. As a former skydiver who lost his younger brother to the sport,I almost stopped reading the book on the chapter where he and his brothers go jumping together as a lark, but in the end it was done so deftly that I had to smile. Writing that can overcome that kind of obstacle is rare and to be treasured.

This was a very cool and exciting book to read. I have never read any of Jenkins's columns but I was intrigued by the premise of the book when listening to him on a radio interview. Jenkins sounds like the guy I want to be, but without the guts. He attacks life....he attacks nature, but he's turned his sojourns all over the world into a sort of an art form.

The book is a collection of adventures and I like the fact that he threw in other different stories in there including an encounter with a thief and parallel storytelling over a number of years.

I realized that it wasn't actually the adventures I enjoyed, but rather the memories and experiences he had while undertaking these adventures. Just like the cliche: "It's not about the destination, but about the journey."

The pace of the book is good and it does not get repetitive so please check this one out.

This is my second favorite book. My first is Off the Map and my third is To Timbuktu. Jenkins is an outstanding author.

A truly superb book. As a longtime reader of Mark Jenkins' articles in Outside magazine i was always going to buy any book he produced. After reading this book I will continue to buy everything he writes. No other writer out there has the techinque Jenkins does. He not only makes you want to get out and go on an adventure of your own, but he lets you in on his own thoughts while he was out there. He brings the meaning of adventure, the soul of it, right to you. While he is clearly a highly talented climber he never once boasts of his accomplishments, but rather shows that adventure is there for all of us to grab. The best thing about this book; you feel as if you could phone up Jenkins, tell him an adventure you had on your mind to do and ask if he wanted to come. I bet you he would say yes.

Mark Jenkins has one of the most honest and direct writing styles in nonfiction. This book is a collection of his columns from his years at Outside Magazine as well as other publications. When you read his unflinching accounts of his travels you are confronted with not only his exhilaration for whatever his predicament, but also his fears and self-doubt. His type of travel is not the package tour but definitely off-the-beaten-path. It's an unadorned and authentic view of humanity in the midst of challenge, against a backdrop of new vistas.

I thought I was ordering a normal-sized book, but I got a supersized book. It is printed in normal font size, but there are 3 inch margins around every page. I don't understand this. There was nothing to indicate this when I ordered it. Did anybody else have this problem?

A great read for anyone that enjoys adventure stories. It may make you want to write your letter of resignation.