The Best Adventure and Survival Stories 2003

My son really enjoyed this book. He likes adventure and thought it was cool to read true stories.

The book is 294 pages and has 16 selections. For the most part they are all good adventure/survival tales but if you really enjoy this genre then you probably already read Outside, Men's Journal and Nat'l Geographic Adventure. So there's the catch. Four of the pieces appeared in Men's Journal over the past year, three in Adventure, and two in Outside - over half the book. Of the remaining seven selections, three are from magazines and four are book excerpts. (In last year's annual nine of 14 were book excerpts and only one magazine was used twice.) Anyway, it is good stuff, and worth reading again. Four selections deal with mountaineering or avalanches. There are profiles of bull riders and stunt flyers. You'll read about killer lions, trekking central Africa, torture in Burma and being taken hostage in Columbia. Several selections are a chronicle of the times we live in: the World Trade Center, bombings in Bali, and the murder of Daniel Pearl. I'm thinking this would be a good holiday present for a a guy, especially a teenage boy who likes adventure and/or the outdoors. (I say 'guy' only because all the stories focus on men or the male point of view in the adventure, though several do involve women.) It is fast, enjoyable reading that hits a pretty wide variety of activity. It makes a good introduction to the Adrenaline Series or the books that provided the excerpts, a couple of which I will now be looking for.