Books : Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance
from: Random House Audio
Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 616
EAN: 9780553528817
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
ISBN: 0553528815
Label: Random House Audio
Manufacturer: Random House Audio
Number Of Items: 3
Publication Date: October 02, 2001
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: October 02, 2001
Sales Rank: 2160438
Studio: Random House Audio
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Product Description:
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Three cassettes, 5 hours
A fascinating blend of adventure and science, LAST BREATH recreates in heart-stopping detail what happens to our bodies and minds in the perilous last moments of life when an extreme adventure goes awry.
With a growing number of people setting out to climb snow-capped mountains, swim choppy seas, and hike through dark, dense jungles, extreme deaths and brushes with death seem to have become everyday occurences. A compelling synthesis of science, history, possibility, and prevention, LAST BREATH examines the physiological, psychological, and emotional stages our bodies and minds endure at the brink of death. Listeners will shiver with a man lost in snowy woods, suffering from
hypthermia, as he tears off his clothes, burning up from cold. They will hallucinate with a young woman as she succumbs to a cerebral edema stranded at the top of Anapurna. And while a kayaker tumbles helpless underwater for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, listeners too will gasp for their last breath.
Amazon.com Review:
Prepare to have some of your greatest fears laid bare in this collection of riveting, and often terrifying, "cautionary tales from the limits of human endurance." Based on interviews with accident survivors and the medical specialists who treat them, veteran outdoor writer Peter Stark offers mostly fictitious accounts (there is one based on a true historical incident) of people caught in life-threatening situations. In Last Breath, he thoroughly explores what happens to the human body and mind during drowning, a long fall, burial beneath an avalanche, hypothermia, dehydration, mountain sickness, the bends, malaria, scurvy, hyperthermia, and contact with a poisonous jellyfish. Stark packs enough historic and scientific information and page-turning suspense into each chapter to make them all fascinating and useful. And he answers some perplexing questions in the process, such as why those suffering from acute hypothermia often rip off their clothing in an effort to save themselves.
No, Stark does not have some unresolved death wish--he readily admits that he fears death. But he also understands that the fine line between life and death actually entices outdoor adventurers to risk everything for the chance to explore their own physical and mental limits. In fact, it is exactly this close proximity to death that makes the experience come alive for certain individuals with the overriding desire "to strip away the superfluous, to remove the protective boundaries between that thing you call a self and something larger." These are the stories of those who crossed the line. --Shawn Carkonen
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I first read this book over five years ago. I could NOT put it down!
These are part fiction part true short stories of the many ways one
can take ones LAST BREATH - literally. For some reason I started in
the middle with the drowning story. A blow by blow clinical description of what goes on in your body as you drown. Facinating! Each story is
pretty much about people taking chances and risking their lives for
different reasons;mountain climbing, cycling, scuba diving,or just being caught out in the cold, - some recover - but some wind up taking their Last Breath. As you read it you know exactly how it happens. I've read it
three times. Great read -especially to the layperson who may not know
strenuous sports or the extremes a human body can withstand.
Rating: -
I read this book in nearly its entirety on a flight home from NY. What a compelling can't-put-down read! I HIGHLY recommend it! This book contains fictionalized tales of real life experiences that humans have gotten themselves into when pushing themselves to the limits in the dangerous outdoors. There are chapters on hypothermia, heat stroke, dehydration, falling, drowning, high altitude sickness, avalanche, scurvy (a particularly nasty chapter), predators, malaria, and the bends. It's one of those extremely rare books that really make you appreciate the comfort of sitting in those cramped, poorly designed aircraft chairs.
Rating: -
This is not a book I would have normally bought. I picked it up at a Bookseller's Convention where publishers were giving away books. As a lover of books, I couldn't turn this or a couple dozen others, down. But this book is fascinating!
Last Breath is a collection of short stories fictionalizing the events--the why, how and results--when man pits himself, sometimes unwittingly, against the elements. For instance, the first story titled: As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow: Hypothermia, follows a young man's journey from the moment he makes the wrong decision that exposes him to a snow storm in the Colorado Mountain to. . . Well, I'm not going to tell you the end. Each story is different, but each intriguing. Stark goes into detail on what happens in someone's mind and body as they face deadly element. Call me ghoulish, but I couldn't stop reading.
Patricia Lewin
Author of BLIND RUN, OUT OF REACH, & OUT OF TIME
Rating: -
This book is one of the best I've read in a long time. To the first reviewer, he clearly didn't understand this book, as is shown by the following reviews.
The author is brilliant, after the chapter on thirst I went to the fridge and drank two sodas right away. The writing is intelligent, you don't get the feeling he's trying to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator. There is just enough medical information to make you understand what is going on physically, but not overwhelm you.
I highly, highly suggest you read this book.
Rating: -
I first read a chapter of this book in paddler magazine and the way Peter Stark described the drowning of a kayaker (Chapter 2: A River of One's Own) in detail right down to the amounts of oxygen remaining in his lungs at various periods of time. The entire book is written as en ewcellent blend of fact and fiction and while the scenarios are not true they are composites of true stories, and some of Stark's imagination, which gives them a realism that pure fiction can't match. The facts Stark gives are sound, he obviously did his homework and he even gives a bibliography so you can check out some of his sources. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get outside.
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