Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure
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List Price: $14.95
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Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Written By: Peter Stark
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616
EAN: 9780345441515
ISBN: 0345441516
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2002-10-01
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 2002-10-01
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Reviews for Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure
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“Forget the edge of your seat. Last Breath takes you to the edge of your life, for a pulse-pounding glimpse into the Great Beyond. There are many ways to risk your life in the out-of-doors, and Stark has captured them in exquisite and harrowing detail.”
–JIM ROBBINS
Author of A Symphony in the Brain
An enthralling blend of adventure and science, Last Breath re-creates in heart-stopping detail what happens to our bodies and our minds in the perilous last moments of life when an extreme adventure goes awry.
Combining the adrenaline high of extreme sports with the startling facts of physiological reality, veteran travel and outdoor sports writer Peter Stark narrates a series of adventure stories in which thrill can cross the line to mortal peril. Each death or brush with death is at once a suspense story, a cautionary tale, and a medical thriller. Will they survive, or will they succumb? Readers will shiver with a man lost in the snowy woods, suffering from hypothermia and tearsing off his clothes as he’s burning up from the cold; they will hallucinate with a young woman stranded at the top of Annapurna as she experiences a cerebral edema; and while a kayaker tumbles helplessly underwater for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, readers, too, will gasp for their last breath.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Heart-pounding look at the physical effects of playing the edge and losing
Comment: What happens when the human body, evolved and adapted to life in the balmy savanna, ventures beyond its limits -- often far beyond? Peter Stark, who has written for "Outdoors" and "Smithsonian," has compiled this series of cautionary tales about people, who through the medium of extreme sporting, have placed themselves at grave risk. He tells us that his tales are composites of true events. Each deals with some aspect of human frailty. There's the man who gets his jeep stuck in a snowdrift and decides to ski 5 miles in a bone-chilling night to his cabin. There's the East German bicyclist competing furiously in Appalachia on a muggy day. There's the 20-something snowboarder cutting through virgin powder in the bowl of a Utah mountainside. Each of Stark's subjects encounters the consequences of playing the edge. Each suffers when they exceed the body's ability to handle extreme heat, cold, altitude or blunt trauma. Stark tells each story from three angles. First, there is the personal angle -- what kind of person is attracted to these sports, and what kind of life do they lead? Then, then is the mental angle -- what is it like inside the mind of a person who is freezing to death or dying of buried under an avalanche? Then there is the physiological angle -- what is going on inside the body of these victims? Along the way, we learn of the body's fantastic, though limited, adaptive mechanisms -- sweat glands, O2 and CO2 sensors, startle and shivering reflexes. And we learn of not-so-rare circumstance in which these adaptations can be overcome by the elements. An overheated bicyclist, for instance, may be doomed simply by the darkness of her riding outfit on a sunny race day.
I found this book compelling and informative. The mix of personal, mental and physiological facets was just right, taking this out of the realm of the textbook. Though composites, Stark's characters seemed real, and even likable in spite of their risky lifestyle preferences. And, I grew to appreciate both the rush that extreme sporters seek, all the while feeling for them as human beings when they lost their grip on the rock face, plunged into the rapid or felt themselves buried under a mountain of snow.
Customer Rating:
Summary: subclinical scurvy - what, ME ?
Comment: I will always remember this book as the one which led me to reconsider my discounting of Pauling's Vitamin-C-megadose-theory due to the chapter 5, which contains selected tidbits of True History ( of scurvy ) interwoven with plausible fiction.
Four stars because the "plausible fiction" often sounds so contrived - for five stars the author might rewrite the book after searching for more tidbits of True History to base each scenario upon.
Still, to read the wikipedia article confirming that humans ARE genetically defective - opposable thumb check, but we can no longer make Vitamin-C while e.g. goats still can, and an adult goat will synthesize "about 13,000 mg" per day, more when sick. Strangely, no one had ever explained it to me that way before !
Customer Rating:
Summary: Too much setup, too little payoff
Comment: In this unconvincing mix of fact and fiction, Peter Stark has pulled off a pretty good trick: he has taken material that is inherently interesting and managed to make it almost boring. His primary problem is that he seems enamored of his own writing. As a result, he has a very poor sense of pacing. He often employs a paragraph when a sentence or two would do. His preface, for example, goes on and on, when the reader--or this reader, at least--just wants him to get on with it. Unfortunately, the hybrid tales that follow are equally inflated. Stark's efforts to create compelling characters and put them in dramatic situations come off as neither good fiction nor good journalism. The good stuff--facts on how people die--occupies such a small part of each story that it's hardly worth the effort. The reader goes through too much setup for too little payoff.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Have read it twice.
Comment: While one reviewer did not like this book at all, I can't agree with him that the characters were not engaging. Even though it is hard to create characters who are only in one situation, and who mostly die at the end of the story, I think the authour succeeded in showing interesting characters. Given the main purpose of the book was to show the physiological ways of death, I was glad the authour didn't focus on creating deep character studies. That would distract from the reason I personally bought the book - to learn about the human body, and how it can die. I am now reading this book again, and don't regret buying it at all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An unblinking look at what it is really like to die
Comment: This might look like a morbid subject, but it isn't really. Every single one of us is going to die, and although we become very good at not thinking about it - developing a kind of mental blind spot that hides the awareness - it might be a good idea to give it some thought. Besides, we could pick up some tips that put off the evil hour. Such as not deciding to ski the rest of the way when our car breaks down in subzero conditions a few miles from the friend's house where we are going. Such as taking the right anti-malarial drugs before going to a part of the world where that disease is endemic. Or not free-soloing a rock face of difficulty 5.9 with no one else in sight or hearing distance.
As Peter Stark explains, risking your life helps you to experience life more fully. But sometimes risks turn out badly, and then it may be too late to be sorry. "Last Breath" tells you exactly what it is like to drown in a "hole" while kayaking a turbulent river, to die of dehydration in the Sahara, or to be buried by an avalanche. So you don't need to try these experiences yourself - which is a good thing, if you want to go on living.
This book is packed with fascinating information about our bodies, how they work, and their relationship with the surrounding environment. Without the support of technology - clothes, houses, heating, and so on - human beings can live only in a narrow band close to the Equator, below 3.5 miles above sea level, and where there is plenty of fresh water. Stark drives home to the reader just how easy it is to misjudge things when stepping outside the ideal environment. Sometimes just one wrong movement - or even one necessary thing left undone...
At the end of "Last Breath", I found there was a wonderful unanticipated bonus. *I* was still alive!
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More Information on Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure
Archives for Read 'Em and Weep with Bronwyn C.
April 2, 2003: "Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure" by Peter Stark. Week #2. Not that most Listeners ever actually *go* outdoors, but this book explains why they shouldn't. | ...
Billings Senior High Read It Forward Project
Read It Forward Project ... Title: Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure: Author: Peter Stark: Submitted by: Mark Desin
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Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure: Author: Stark, Peter: Format: Trade Paperback Publisher: Ballantine Books Published: 10/01/2002
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Peter Stark, author of Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure. Vivien Bowers gives a rare look inside the world of avalanches and the ...
Last Breath by Peter Stark - Trade Paperback - Random House
Last Breath The Limits of Adventure Written by Peter Stark. Category: Sports & Recreation - Essays; Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages; On Sale: October 1, 2002; Price: $14.95; ISBN: 978-0-345-44151 ...
Editorial: Life is Fragile [July - September 2006]
Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure . Recently I read with fascination a book by Peter Stark titled Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure (2001).
Deep Survival (Main Page)
... personal survival stories with the study of human perception to reach rock-bottom truths about how to live with risk."—Peter Stark, author of Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure"
Reader Reviews: Books and Media @ Backpacking Light Magazine
Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure by Peter Stark: 3: 5.00: 04/14/2008 21:32:34 MDT. Camping and Woodcraft by Horace Kephart: 3: 5.00: 02/21/2007 08:08:31 MST
Powell's Books - Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My ...
... honestly, and insightfully told — ranks with the most dramatic survival stories of the last two centuries." Peter Stark, author of Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure
SPORTS & RECREATION : Essays Books
October 2008, Hardcover List Price: $28.00; Last Breath : The Limits of Adventure by Peter Stark October 2008, Prebinding (Hardcover) List Price: $23.95
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