Survive: Stories of Castaways and Cannibals [Paperback]

Nate Hardcastle (Author), Clint Willis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2002 | Series: Adrenaline

Survive brings together stories about people who find themselves stuck in survival situations in lifeboats, mountains, desert islands, jungles and the arctic. Most of the stories are about ordinary people who must perform heroically to survive -- and some of them are forced to break our greatest taboo to stay alive. The narratives that have emerged are dramatic and compelling, involving issues of physical, moral, and emotional courage. Survive features standout writing from Steven Callahan (Adrift), Leonard Clark (The Rivers Ran East), Lennard Bickel (Shackleton's Forgotten Men), Virginia Reed Murphy (Across the Plains in the Donner Party), Jack London (The Whale Tooth), Herman Melville (Typee), and even Patrick O'Brian (The Nutmeg of Consolation). Like other Adrenaline titles, this one continues to tap one of our greatest literary resources: exceptional human beings in extreme circumstances. 17 black-and-white photographs accompany the gripping adventure stories.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Hardcastle (Deep Blue: Stories of Shipwreck, Sunken Treasure and Survival), associate editor of Adrenaline Books, has brought together 16 fictional and nonfictional stories of adventure and survival penned over the past 300 years. Thirteen of them deal with cannibalism, four being fictional accounts by writers as diverse as Jack London and Mark Twain. While Hardcastle admits in the introduction that scholars have questioned the veracity of six of the nine nonfiction pieces, he himself makes no bones about including them in the collection. He also makes no excuses for the often choppy editing and the sparse and uninformative introductions to each piece. The inclusion of works by such eminent writers as London, Twain, Daniel Defoe, and Herman Melville will attract some readers, but on the whole, this book relies on morbid curiosity for its appeal and will probably be appreciated only by a select number of patrons. Recommended for large libraries only. Mary V. Welk, Chicago
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The name of the series of which this volume is the latest entry is the Adrenaline series, which pretty much sums up this book. It could be pegged as the "reality TV of the book world." The previous nine anthologies in this series focused on a particular desperate circumstance --mountain climbing, shipwrecks, and even organized crime, for instance. This book focuses on perhaps the most gruesome situation of all--castaways and cannibalism. The book offers 16 vignettes (though, unfortunately, an unwary reader could be confused, because some of the tales are true-life while others are culled from famous fictional stories). Savvy readers will recognize Steve Callahan and his fine "Adrift," in which he relates his 76-day ordeal adrift in the South Atlantic in a rubber raft, as well as such excellent fiction as Patrick O'Brian's "The Unknown Shore." Definitely for addicts of the current survival shows, who, in between episodes, can feast on stories such as Tobias Schneebaum's, who writes of tasting a human heart in the Amazon. Allen Weakland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 301 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (January 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560253673
• ISBN-13: 978-1560253679
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)