Written by those who fear them, those who study them and those who hunt them - May lets you see the shark from many perspectives. It would have been easy to just compile as many accounts of gristly attacks as possible, but May had taken a higher road. Rodney Fox explains how an attack victim forces himself back into the surf, the model for Jaws' shark-hunter Quint tells how he got into the business. The book is not just about sharks, but about the people who try to share their world. And of course, just to make sure you stay on the beach this summer, there are some dramatic accounts of attacks - not all of which were survivable. The selections are well-chosen and pretty much closed-ended so you don't feel cheated, although the excerpt of Caldwell's solo Pacific crossing may have you searching for the rest of his story. This is light and interesting reading - fast paced - perfect for summer.

A worthy successor to "Wild Blue", which is still one of the series' very best volumes in my opinion. Sky High is 300 pages, 12 nonfiction tales and a selection from H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon. I'd have preferred another true story, but that's me. There are two WWI flying tales, and a pair of WWII stories, one very good. Rounding out the military aviation is a complete article about several days spent on a modern aircraft carrier - strong stuff. Yeager tells of breaking the sound barrier (Wolfe's version was excerpted in "Wild Blue"); in Sky High the excerpt from Wolfe's 'The Right Stuff' is about John Glenn orbiting the earth, and it's terrific. Gene Cernan describes the tensions of walking in space and an excerpt from Chaikin's 'A Man on the Moon' details the horrifying Apollo fire that killed astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. Personally I think these 'space stories' are the three best in the book. Rounding it all out - an interesting full piece on crop dusting, a tribute to an Alaskan Bush pilot and a not-so interesting story about a nature writer who survives a plane crash (my least favorite, luckily at the end where it doesn't interupt the flow of adrenaline.) Three of the 13 selections are complete, the rest are excerpted. This volume lives up to the 'adrenaline' rush the cover promises and if you like it, don't forget to check out "Wild Blue".

if you think you don't like stories of knights and swordplay. I thought I didn't, and I'd never read any of the selections here - King Arthur, Excalibur, The 3 Musketeers, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, Musashi. But it's great stuff! These are the original adventure tales and they have not lost their edge over time. I will be getting some of the books that are excerpted here to see how the stories end. This book is readable from the middle school level and if your kids think knights are boring compared to James Bond, give them this volume and see if they don't come around. The selections are "closed ended" so you don't feel cheated when you finish - just hungry for more. I'm very glad I took a chance on this book.

There are fifteen selections in this book, the only fiction piece being the scene from Godfather II in which Vito Corleone rises to power. There are a couple selections from more scholarly works on the rise and workings of organized crime in Italy and America, a couple of "I was there" memoirs and some great reporting on recent figures like John Gotti. But also some very interesting work on a town in Ohio where the town fathers are hand in glove with OC, an interesting piece on NYC Chinatown tongs and on the Bulger brothers of Massachusetts - one a state senate leader, the other a mobster - particularly relevant now (July 2003) because they are back in the news with the wanted mobster gone missing. Every selection is interesting and closed-ended enough that you can enjoy it. Six are stand-alone articles. If you enjoyed "Mob" you'll enjoy this, and vice versa. Great light summertime reading.

The collection of stories here ranges from excellent to, in my opinion, weak. The modern stories of ghetto policing is as equally exciting as the riots of the Gangs of New York. However there is a secion about murders in the 1800's where no one is captured. This is weak and offers lots of ifs and buts as to the identities of the killers. The piece on Justin Volpe just stops offering no conclusion to those not already familiar with the case. A good read but could offer a whole lot more.

I've just started reading this book about 3 days ago and it's already given me much pleasure. As a police sergeant and a former NYC resident, I have to smile at the dry no bull section on ghetto policing and I'm in awe when I read the story about the draft riot in New York. It is hard to believe that the city was the stage of what amounted to an all out war within it's boundries!

If you like police stories and you love New York, then I know you'll enjoy this one!

it's a terrific book, with no weak stories, but they are NOT the ones listed above in the editorial review. Enlarge the cover photo - those are the writers you'll see. There's nothing by Maas, Wolfe, Stroud, Hellman, etc. I don't know where that other list came from. The stories included, though, are gritty and compelling. I liked the one by Joe Poss so much that I have already ordered a copy of his out-of-print book. I consider myself to have read a lot of NYPD stories and I had seen none of these before. The variety has always been the greatest thing about the Adrenaline series - my shelves now have many books I first "met" through this series. Anyway - no weak sisters here; it's all strong stuff, from the late 1800's to very current events (no WTC). There are 12 entries - three authors each wrote two, but you won't care - when the cops themselves write you feel like you're sitting next to them in the car. A great gift, one of the series' best volumes.

I enjoyed this book, and read it in one day, pouring through the various chapters and one tragedy to the next. My only complaint is that many of the chapters were excerpts from other books, and the stories sometimes felt unfinished. Those excerpts would cover the hit (or near miss) of the summit, then cover some sort of trial to the participating climbers. The climbers may or may not survive the trial, and then that would be the end of it. I actually craved a little bit more of the post-expedition soul-searching.

Like everybody else, I read "Into Thin Air" and bought more mountaineering books, this being one. Luckily, climbers tend to be a pretty literary lot, because the basic theme of all these books is : Damn, we're out of food/its cold/ I can't feel my feet/hands/nose/my brain is swelling up/I lost my way/tent/sleeping bag/gloves/I almost (or you DID) fall off this cliff. All this is followed by the endless anticlimax of the summit if reached and, worst of all, endless navel contemplation about the meaning of it all. I don't know why this stuff is so compelling, but there it is. I read this book in four sittings when I had a lot of more important stuff to do. Then I went out and bought Everest: The West Ridge by Tom Hornbein. And I live in Florida , have never been higher than 5,000 feet and have never climbed anything higher than the roof of my house. Go figure. I will say that these mountaineering books have a significant collateral benefit - they scare the hell out of the wife.

This book contains the greatest short stories about climbing that I have ever read. Each story is unique and as entertaining as the other.

The stories that one finds in Adrenaline 2000 takes the reader away, from the remotest deserts to the wildest oceans. Each story is richly written with entertaining results. You can actually feel the sense of dread and drama in "Desperate Passage" as the author travels on a Haitian ship packed with hopeful refugees bound for America; or the terrifying, paralyzing feeling of looking into the eyes of death while being attacked by a crocodile in "Being Prey." There's also the deep passionate sorrow one finds in the amazon, a place familiar with death, in the sad but heartfelt "Journey of The Pink Dolphins." All in all, each story tells of the most amazing thing of all, the human spirit- what man will do to survive or rescue their fellow man from certain death, even at great personal risk. This book is richly rewarding. Each account reads like a short story, yet the reader is seeing exactly what happened when the author was faced with his or her most trying moment. This is a good read.

Proof that the age of adventure hasn't passed us by. These thirteen stories will keep you reading all night. The fact that they've all been written in the last year gives them a relevence you can't always find in a story 50 years old. At the same time, several are built around the stories of earlier explorers, like the hunt for man-eating lions in Tsavo or the search for Mallory and Irvine, and these remind us that the world hasn't gotten any safer for those who go to extremes. The stories were well-chosen: I had not read any of them before. This will make a great gift book for anyone who enjoys adventure reading. The only complaint - it's about 100 pages shorter (265) than the other books in the series.

I'll echo the first reviewer's sentiments about the general quality of the selections: mostly excellent, some even masterful (especially Hynes' "Flights of Passage"). I would like to read the full-length versions of at least five of the 12 or so selections Willis excerpted. If you especially like oral history, or first-person accounts, this is a good sampling to whet your appetite for other, complete works.

Clint Willis has now published a number of books that are good collections of interesting subjects. "The War" is one of his best. Of course there are some entries that are better than others, but there are some absolutely wonderful pieces. The strength of his collections are that he has great diversity, and "The War" shows this by picking out stories from all aspects of WWII. And on top of that, Clint Willis is giving you a sampling of great stories that will direct you to other books you never knew existed. If you're interested in WWII, and like good stories, take a look at this collection.

This book is stunning! almost all my friend s have read it and they think it was great! STUNNING!

Like all of you who read this review,you're Everest junkies who probably won't even get near this mountain, but are hooked on all books about it.
High; Stories of survival from Everest and K2 is NOT what you're looking for. This book is nothing but one-chapter excerpts from other books. It's like walking into a movie half way through: You have no idea what's going on. Also, there are no maps of either Everest or K2, so if writers of these chapters (and some of them are BORING writers!) describe trouble on Everest's north col or K2's Abruzzi ridge, we can't picture these places in our minds.
This book (unlike all the other Everest books I bought and immediately read) has been sitting on my bedstand for months. I only read it when I wake up at 3AM and can't go back to sleep. Just reading from this book puts me back to sleep reeeeeal fast!
Don't bother with this one. The Everest season is happening right now. Maybe more books will come from this year's hikers.

I very much enjoyed and highly recommend this book. I've read many of the books from which these chapters are selected, yet there was much fresh material for me. The editing was so masterful that even though the chapters are from different writers, mountains, and times, they flowed together seamlessly

High does for climbing what the movie The Thin Red Line did for combat: It explores not the details of the event, but the inner thoughts of the participants. You read what it feels like to have a climber dying in a tent next to you. You learn about the humilation of having frostbite while back at home. You are with the widows who trek in the paths of their husbands to glimpse the mountain graves of their loved ones.

While I can understand that some reviewers felt the selections dropped one into the middle of a big problem high on a mountain without the broader context of the expedition, I didn't feel this was a problem. I don't need the beginning, middle, and end to enjoy a brief tale. There are plenty of books that give all those details, yet few that are gripping to read from the first page to the last.

This is the first book i've read that was a collection of excerpts from other books. The only thing i didn't like was that the book itself was big and bulky. Well anyways, just buy it. you won't be disappointed.

The first 3/4 of this book are 5-star, but it slips a bit toward the end when it dredges up Vietnam stories (one of which is fiction). Couple things to realize - first, it's not 368 pages - it's under 300. Second - it's not the stuff they advertise. Blow up the cover photo above to see what's really in there. No Peter Maas, no Stanton in Somalia, no Baer of the CIA and no Scott O'Grady, who wouldn't have belonged anyway, not being Special Forces. You get a really good article on SF in Afghanistan, a thrilling story from Desert Storm, an interesting story from Honduras, a couple of riveting reads from Haiti, and of course a chunk of Black Hawk down. But by page 172 you're back in Vietnam reading tired stuff you've seen before. It's worth buying for the first 172 pages, but given the subtitle, I wish Mr. Hardcastle had included some of what was advertised instead of the Vietnam stuff. Still and all, you won't put it down once you start - it's a two-day read and you'll enjoy it.

Unfortunately, most of the material here has been published prior to this book. There are a few original pieces though. The first is the only one that deals with Afghanistan("The Legend of Heavy D"). Most of the remaining originals deal with either Somalia or Vietnam...There was one particularly interesting piece about Green Berets training terrorists in Libya that I'd never heard of before in any of my extensive USSOF research. I got it to add to my SF library, but it's not essential. If you haven't read Mark Bowden, Eric Haney and Robert Baer's books (all excellent) this will provide you with some good samples ^_^