1 comments about Count of Alaska.

1. This book is a very good account of the gold rush of alaska. The hard ships and great riches are found and lost. If you want to exprience what the gold rush was like and if you have what it takes to walk in their steps read this book.
   Brenda

No comments about Cathlamet on the Columbia: Recollections of the Indian people and short stories of early pioneer days in the valley of the lower Columbia River.

No comments about Snake Charmer: A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge.

No comments about Henson at the North Pole (Dover Books on Travel, Adventure).

No comments about Survivors: True Tales of Endurance.

2 comments about Flying With My Angel: Surviving Religion, Sex And Helicopters.

1. Flying With My Angel has been a joy to read because I worked with Phil in PNG and SE Asia. The sights, sounds, smells and chaos that came with working in these countries are well written by Phil. The pilots mentioned in the book are people that I have spent years with enjoying the joys of bush helicopter flying and having that special bonding that happens when you share life or death situations. This is a story that will never happen again because it was all new at the time. Anyone that would like to experience what it was like to be a pioneer in helicopter aviation will enjoy this book



2. This is a remarkably candid self portrait that begins in a bubble of leftover 19th century Australian outback. Latz has an unerring, inexhaustible drive to remake himself and a never-ending appetite for nurturing machinery. There's lots of drinking, lots of enticing girls, and lots of aircraft problems that summon his ingenious solutions. By testing himself at extremes, he passes through many incarnations, each time jettisoning the identity that others would like him to occupy. By far the hardest abandonment is leaving the religion of his parents, and all the visceral restrictions that go with it.
   
   Graduating from cars to planes to helicopters, then to bigger and bigger helicopters, he redefines himself as if rising up a ladder a rung at a time. It's some sort of 20th century hunting and gathering whose principle he must have acquired from the aboriginal people he grew up with. Its momentum, however, leaves no time for contemplation and family life. The reckoning for all this comes when his wife leaves him.
   
   The writing is spare and functional, like the life it describes. My wife and I both had the same reaction: we literally couldn't put it down. The flow of the book is addictive, and its honesty remarkable. The subtext is dancing with death, and escaping over and over again--with the uncanny implication that Latz has not escaped religion at all. He's simply redefined it through living. One cannot evade a spiritual dimension no matter how rationally and scientifically one lives. Some force which he calls an angel has cared for him, and now it's time to look around. There are rules to the universe and Latz, unknown to himself, finds that he plays by them--and the universe responds in kind.

No comments about Backcountry Pilot: Flying Adventures with Ike Russell (The Southwest Center Series).

2 comments about Robert Service: A Great Canadian Poet's Romance with the North (Amazing Stories) (Amazing Stories).

1. Never realized that the poet Robert Service was such an adventurer and rebel until I read this book. A tightly-written biography filled with interesting information about his early life in Scotland, his life in British Columbia, California and Yukon, and then later in Europe. Author does a great job of taking the reader along as Robert Service goes after his dreams and along the way, writes some of the world's greatest poetry.



2. This is an well-written book that is great read for all ages. The author has produced a fascinating book that keeps you reading into the night. The book captures well the adventuresome, wanderlust side of Robert Service, weaving in stories about his family life and his career as a poet, author and novelist. Excellent book about an incredible man who has become a Canadian icon.

3 comments about The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.

1. Nearly finished this book but thought I would share my comments now.
   
   The book is written very much for someone who already knows about Lawrence's life and is adding this to their collection.
   It doesn't seem to take into account that you might actually want to read about his life and be kept in some suspense about what will happen. He jumps back and forth in time quite a lot in the beginning because he tends to first discuss a period in high level before then dealing with it in a chapter. Very annoying as if you're reading a masters thesis which lays out
   all its conclusions at the beginning and the rest of the book is an attempt to back up those statements. Takes a lot of the fun out of the read.
   
   I read recently Rice's biography of Capt. Sir Richard Francis Burton and this really demonstrated a much better way of presenting a biography.



2. According to Lawrence James's account, the Lawrence of Arabia most of us know is largely a myth concocted in accordance with TE Lawrence's huge ego and his overwhelming desire to present the Arabs, for whom he desperately wanted to secure the right of self-rule, in the best light. James concludes that much of what we think we know about Lawrence, including his infamous rape by the Turks, are lies. This is a very interesting book about a controversial figure.



3. The author is faced with the difficult task of showing that T.E. Lawrence embellished his own deeds without taking away from what he did accomplish. While the myths about the man are interesting (the classic Lawrence of Arabia movie) the real story is far more interesting. A great book.

No comments about Alfred Russel Wallace - British Naturalist and Explorer (Biography).