Larry Kaniut
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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Disaster Relief
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Ecology -> General AAS
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Hiking & Camping -> Excursion Guides -> United States -> Alaska
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Alaskan Melodrama in the Style of Reader's Digest 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.
I think reading any work should teach you something, and tales of wilderness incidents should not simply be armchair rubbernecking. This book is a collection of true incidents involving sportsman, backcountry travelers, and bush pilots. Their misfortunes could have been models for preventing readers from finding themselves in similar situations. Kaniut misses this opportunity. Instead of an analysis of the actions that saved the subjects (or cost them their lives), most stories are just circular and pointless recollections of how scary it was having a bear drag you around/being submerged in freezing water/crashing a plane in the backcountry, etc. According to this book, surviving these incidents simply requires some really hard praying, but reaffirms one's love of life and/or faith in god. It's akin to seeing dozens of people pulled from a wrecked plane and saying "WOW, what a miracle!!" while ignoring what the pilot did in the last seconds, recognizing the crew for an efficient evacuation, and acknowledging the skill and training of the ground emergency response crews. Kaniut would relate being mauled by a bear, the conclusion being that this was a terrible attack by a viscous animal, but god smiled and saved the day. In contrast, an NGS story I read after Danger Stalks about several bear attacks on hunters taught me (if I was inclined) how not to handle kills and seasonal factors that could emerge in the future that would make bears more aggressive, all the while infusing the human emotional element of these attacks. A serious missed opportunity is analyzing bush pilots' incidents. This book could have served as an excellent resource for this otherwise dry and difficult to find info (you can read FAA/NASA reports, but they often lack analysis, can be hard to sort through, and often simply blame "pilot error leading to..."); but the reader will have to find their own lessons in the aircraft incidents, if Kaniut provided enough detail between the sermons and anecdotes. Thus distilled, Danger Stalks is either just reflective of the human fascination with other's bad luck or a fluffy triumph of the human spirit book.
Editorial Review:
Alaska is like no other state and few countries; men experience greater risk in her arms. This one-of-a-kind anthology captures the spine tingling adventures of daring men and women who venture into Alaska's vast wilderness and look death in the eye. Danger Stalks the Land relates gripping episodes of animal attacks, avalanches, aircraft disasters, fishing, hunting, and skiing accidents, and chronicles risky climbs and reckless mountaineering amid Alaska's fantastic peaks. Through exhaustive research and interviews, author Larry Kaniut has captured in one volume, the terror and beauty of man's attempt to explore a vast and unforgiving land.
