Saturday, July 27, 2013

Review: Extreme Survivors

Extreme Survivors: 60 of the most extreme survival stories!


Anyone with a taste for adventure will love this book.
Extreme Survivors is packed full of stories of the utmost bravery.
The adventure book details 60 of the most daring escapes of all times, from Mary Queen of Scots’ escape from her remote Scottish castle and Shackleton’s incredible shipwreck journey to South Georgia to the miraculous escape of 16 people from Stairway B of the Twin Towers.
With a foreword by celebrated English adventurer Bear Grylls, this inspiring book is crammed with statistics, archive photographs and maps that bring these amazing events to life.
264 pages. Paperback.
(blurb from Presents for Men)

Review

I don't usually review books like this, that are non-fiction/factual, but when I was requested by a company, I thought - why not try something new? 

I have not read the entire book as I believe that will take me a fair bit of time, compared to novels, which you would usually find reviewed on this blog, the pages of Extreme Survivors are jam packed with facts and stories. I would describe Extreme Survivors as an encyclopaedia of many journeys and real experiences people have gone through and recorded for our knowledge and entertainment.

Features of the book

As the book is rather large, with a wide range of survival stories, the contents page is helpful to pick out the few stories that interest you by title, and then you can go back and read others at another time. For example, this story interested me ‘The Sole Survivor of Flight 626, 2009’ by title. (I guess extreme stuff entertains me) 

When you come to a story page beneath the title, there is a quick brief of the story - outlining the events which can inform you how interested you are in reading on. Below this are photographs and a table showing the main facts/details of the story including date, situation and dangers (which can show how severe the conditions which the person survived).

The stories are then laid out in the format of a newspaper article in columns, with sections, subheadings and quotes. The subheadings divide the story into parts of the experience such as before, many parts during depending on the story and after; which provides a deeper detailed insight of the story.

The stories usually consist of photographs of the survivor and other visual stimuli such as maps and beautiful landscape images. 

Extreme survivors consists of in total, 60 stories which I believe any reader from teenagers, to young adults and older readers who have a desire to learn, or a passion for history, geography or maybe just find reading extreme stories with danger exciting and entertaining (I fall into this category of reader I must confess) will thoroughly enjoy this read. It can be a book that always belongs on your shelves, next to the encyclopaedias, dictionaries and thesauruses’. Its a great thing to keep one quiet and entertained, maybe for this summer whilst at the beach, if your wife is sunbathing and the kids are playing in the sand... pick up extreme survivors... I'm sure it'll keep you interested longer than a newspaper.    

'Informative, interesting and insightful'

Extreme Survivors, reviewed for Presents for Men




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