Will to Live

February 1, 2011
The creator of TVs Survivorman looks at some real-life survival situations and offers his perspective on them. Some will be familiar to many: the 1972 Andes crash of an airplane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team (chronicled in the book and movie, Alive); Chris McCandless solo hike into the Alaskan wilderness (subject of the book and movie, Into the Wild). Others less familiar are no less fascinating, such as the plight of the Karluk, a ship that, during the 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition, was trapped several months in an ice pack. Stroud approaches the stories practically: heres what these people did, heres what they should have done, heres what you should think about doing if youre ever in a similar situation. He offers intelligent tipsif youre traveling somewhere remote, tell people where youre going, take a well-stocked survival kit, and keep a cool head if you get lostand he does an excellent job of putting readers into the situations hes discussing, making us feel the cold or the panic or the sheer desperation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)