Crimes Against Humanity : Laurence Gonzales

OMG! What a tedious ass this guy is. I can't help thinking - one of my greatest acts of survival is getting through his cowpat of a book. Doesn't he realize people who pick up such books are busy? And goddam it! At the end, he tells you want to do to survive - in a 12 point list. Really? You expect people to remember drab writing - or do you expect them to write the steps down and keep the piece of paper under their foot inside their shoe for the time they're actually pinned in a rapid river?

Jeez! Some of the stories are cool - but, think for a minute - he didn't make those up - he just tells you about them. What did Gregory David Roberts say when asked why he didn't just tell his own story instead of fictionalizing it? Answer - creating is much harder. It's easy to narrate events.

Bottom line - all of this guy's original writing is trash and you're saving yourself a lot of time skipping over it. Maybe the Kindle version lets you do that.

If he gave you some exercises you could do everyday, that would be something. A mnemonic you could use to remember the tips? That would help. Anything but serial listing of mundane ideas.. Please.. oh what a tedious ass!

The key point that this guy missed - none of the "survivors" he deifies read his book. If they had, they'd probably be dead, if not from not making it out of their ordeals, definitely from boredom.

Without knowing much, I can say one thing about survival - you can't read a book and miraculously have the odds increase in your favour. Now, if he described exercises and lists of things you could carry, that would be different.

I'd say - always have a ziplock bag with some dry material that you might be able to use to start a fire :)

In putting his own to-do list together, I'd say he's missed the point of his own book. Consider what he says about Nick Williams @ Squaw Valley : Many factors contributed to Williams' surviving what would have killed most people. He was extremely fit, jogging and roller blading the steep hills of San Francisco. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy and had been a Marine fighter pilot. And he'd had the drive, strength, and character to climb the corporate ladder; he was president and CEO of Premisys Communications, a company with $100 million in annual sales at the time. So, as a spokesman for the hospital that treated Williams put it, "His mental toughness was unreal."

Can you get that by reading the dumbass list that G puts together? You decide. Can you read and act, or does it take years of hard work developing habits to :

1. Perceive, believe (look, see, believe)
2. Stay calm (use humor, use fear to focus)
3. Think/analyze/plan (get organized, set up small, manageable tasks)
4. Take correct, decisive action (duh, when your out there, how do you know what's "correct")
5. Celebrate your successes
6. Count your blessings
7. Play (sing, play mind games, recite poetry, count anything, do math problems in your head)
8. See the beauty
9. Believe that you will succeed (one that really cracks me up. A to-do list! Idiot!)
10. Surrender (let go of your fear of dying)
11. Do whatever is necessary (really? was this guy getting paid for the number of words in the book?)
12. Never give up (year, right - same theme - a to-do list! Idiot!)

And just after this, maybe between this and what comes two pages later, he took a month long vacation. No other way to explain this :

The real heroism of the astronauts is not in the risks they take - any idiot can throw his life away - but in the much more arduous lengths to which they go to protect themselves from harm. They know that adventure becomes folly when you stop looking out for number one. It's not selfishness, it's that fine distinction between going forth boldly and going forth blindly, a balance between dedication to the mission and informed caution. It takes real skill to strike that balance, and at their best, adventurers are both bold and cautious. That means knowing where the envelope ends, and moreover, knowing yourself well enough to estimate correctly just how far beyond it you can go and still get back.

See - something better. Still, a whole book and hardly a word about meditation. Sure, he mentions Zen and all that, but not much of what *YOU* can do on a daily basis to increase the odds..

If this guy really wants to do his audience a favour - why not do some quality research and talk about what kinds of badges the survivors had racked up *before* the ordeal - compared to the bucket kickers - how many more workshops, books, etc had they under their belt?

Again, driving home my point :

I've watched as astronauts such as Bob Cabana, G R and J Newman, who did the first assembly of the International Space Station, become master of their mission. They studied everything, practiced every move, and trained half a decade for a task that took two weeks. It's the secret of their success. By the time they get to the real mission, it seems like just one more drill. It's familiar, and that allows clear thinking. A panicked mind is a useless mind. (Bingo - build up cognitive reserve).

Not a bad time to mention : Practice doesn't make perfect. It makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfet!