Average customer rating:
- The Red Horseman (Book Reveiw)
- Red Horsemen is a dull event
- Stephen Coonts flying high at a low altitude
- Interesting but poorly written
- Good Book, great fun
|
The Red Horseman
Stephen Coonts
Manufacturer: Wheeler Pub Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 United States
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| African American
| Asian American
| Classics
| Collections & Readers
| Drama
| General
| Hispanic
| History & Criticism
| Humor
| Jewish American
| Letters & Correspondence
| Native American
| Poetry
| Short Stories
| Women Writers
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Family Saga
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Thrillers
| Mystery & Thrillers
| Subjects
| Books
Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue
| Thrillers
| Mystery & Thrillers
| Subjects
| Books
Literature & Fiction
| Large Print
| Formats
| Books
Mystery & Thrillers
| Large Print
| Formats
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Under Siege
-
The Minotaur
-
Cuba (A Jake Grafton Novel)
-
Final Flight
-
America: A Jake Grafton Novel
ASIN: 1568950322 |
Customer Reviews:
The Red Horseman (Book Reveiw).......2006-02-17
The Red Horseman (Book Review)
Nuclear warheads turn up missing. A British journalist is dead and it all is tied together somehow. The Cold War is in progress and someone in the Soviet Union and the C.I.A. are working together to transport warheads to the Middle East. Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington are sent on a mission to find the warheads. C.I.A. agents visited both their houses and tell them not to go to Russia. Jake is now a target for terrorists everywhere. Apparently someone in the Middle East wants to have nuclear weapons. Jake thinks if the missiles are obtained by unfriendly Middle Eastern countries they would launch them towards America. Toad and Jake went to Russia on a mission to find the missing Warheads. They hire a hacker to assist them in locating the warheads. Meanwhile an American journalist named Jack Yocke is already in Russia and saw some Russians with machine guns gunned down a whole bunch of people. The weird thing was no police or any other agency responded after the shooting was over. Jack told Jake about the incident as soon as he arrived in Russia. Jake then told a Russian officer and he said he didn't know why the police didn't take action. Jake and Toad already thought Herb Tenney was behind the massacre and suggested to the police to arrest him. They went with the police to search Tenney's place. The search revealed strange tablets that may have made Jake sick at the party the other day. After Tenney is released he dusted his house for fingerprints and finds matches for Toad and Jake. Jake then learns Herb is up to something and it is related to the warheads. Jake finally learns the tactics of how to be a navy seal. He also learns how to skydive and most importantly fly a jet aircraft. His skills would later be put to the test when he gets in a dogfight with four Russian jets. He surprisingly makes it through without being killed. Jake finally finds the nuclear warheads. He figures out Saddam Hussein was behind all of it. I recommend this book to people who like techno-thrillers and mysteries. I also recommend it to people who are interested in the armed forces. This is a really great book and I enjoyed it a lot.
The best reason I liked this book was because of the non-stop action. In the beginning some C.I.A. agents went into Jake's and Toad's house. Jake fought back but the two C.I.A. agents overpowered him and threatened him. Toad was threatened but then Jake got his gun and scared them away. There was when the journalist saw the terrorist shooting and lived to tell the tale. The journalist even inspected the dead bodies without anybody noticing. Finally the best part in the whole book was the dogfight. I don't know how a person who just learned how to fly a jet can shoot down four planes all by himself but Jake managed to pull it off. It was unrealistic but it was very exciting to read in specific detail how Jake shot them down.
The second would have to be a lot of the events were explained in explicit detail. When Jake was first learning how to become a navy seal it told you how they drilled through the training and how perfectly he did it when he actually had to. The author told how unstable Jake's first flights were and how he struggled with getting it off the runway because he would either give too little power or too much. On his first flight I thought he was going to crash because in flight he couldn't stabilize the plane properly.
Last was when Jake was solving the mystery. It made it seem like you were the character in the book trying to figure out the mystery. The start of the mystery was very confusing because it had a whole bunch of names and sometimes I forgot some of them. Later in the problem it started to get very interesting because you could sense Jake getting closer because of all the events like General Brown dying, the shooting, etc.
Last was the book was unpredictable. When the journalist's body turned up in the ocean without any signs of drowning is one example of this. He probably wasn't drunk and records clarified that there were C.I.A. agents aboard. There was also a time when people Jake knew kept dying and you thought he was going to be next. For instance General Brown died of a heart attack because of the tablet with poison that Tenney gave him. That is how the British journalist died and even General Shmarov died all of a heart attack. For some reason Jake managed not to get poisoned which really surprised me. I would have never figured that Saddam was behind the entire problem. I thought it was going to be some random terrorist but it was a well known terrorist.
This book is for people in the armed forces and for people who like mystery/thriller books. Jake developed in many ways as a character. The book was unpredictable, had lots of detail, and lots of action. I really liked this book and this is one of the best books I read. Jake would have never survived without Toad by his side giving him advice. Toad didn't have to come to Russia but he did anyway to keep him company. The details made it seem as if you were the main character not Jake. The fight was explained in detail, the training, almost everything was explained in a lot of detail. The book was also like there was action on every single page and I never wanted to put the book down. The dogfight was too interesting for me to go and do something other than read.
By: D.Bennett
Red Horsemen is a dull event.......2005-05-07
I love reading, but this book actually made me dislike it enough that I started looking for reasons not to read. Hopefully it is just this book.
Stephen Coonts flying high at a low altitude.......2004-12-30
The high point of "The Red Horseman" is the aerial dogfight between Jake Grafton (flying a Russian Su-25 "Frogfoot") and four Russian Su-27 "Flankers", with most of the action taking place below 200 ft. altitude! Stephen Coonts is very good at writing about this kind of combat, and you really feel that you're right there in the cockpit with Jake.
This book is the fifth or sixth (depending on how you number them) book in the Jake Grafton series. By now Stephen Coonts had established himself as a worthy competitor to Tom Clancy, and in my opinion his books are better than Clancy's. In particular, the characters in a Stephen Coonts book are real people, and people you enjoy learning more and more about.
In the first two-thirds of "The Red Horseman" the story unfolds slowly, but satisfactorily, as an international political thriller. Jake, now a Rear Admiral in the American Defense Intelligence Agency, is sent to Moscow to help monitor the Russian dismantling of their nuclear warheads. The CIA is also involved, but not in the way we would expect, and of course some warheads go missing.
The last third of the book becomes a techno-thriller. The hunt is on to retrieve the missing warheads and to ensure that no more will be stolen. In addition to the great dogfight mentioned above there is a very detailed description of how a major military operation to secure an enemy airfield would be done nowadays.
I found this last section of the book to be the most interesting and exciting part. The whole thing is rather unrealistic, but the reader is willing to ignore that because it's so exciting. Unfortunately, I thought that the ending was a bit too far out, and this is part of the reason for the lack of the fifth star.
Also on the negative side, I found Stephen Coonts opinion of post-glasnost Russia overly derogatory. He has his characters saying "nothing works here" and "Russia is on its way to the stone age" so many times it becomes silly. This is especially true with the hindsight we have now that Russia did survive the Yeltsin era and is slowly but surely becoming a developed country by western standards.
A very interesting sub-plot in "The Red Horseman" involves the death of a British newspaper mogul named Nigel Keren. Stephen Coonts has very clearly modeled Nigel Keren on the real-life Robert Maxwell. Even their dates of death are identical!
In conclusion, a very good techno-thriller, up to the usual Stephen Coonts standards. If you like military techno-thrillers with lots of political skullduggery, then this is for you.
Rennie Petersen
Interesting but poorly written.......2004-02-20
I can't believe I made it through the book, this is the first book in a long time that I have been tempted to drop in the middle. The plot is very interesting and at times kept my attention. It also got more and more improbable as the plot grinded its gears through the book. Jake Grafton is apparently some kind of god and can do anything and go anywhere apparently without authority from anyone else but himself. The book would have been alright if these were its only flaws, after all it is a novel and I expected to put my disbelief on hold while I read (not everyone can write like Clancy).
The major problem with the book is the writing. All the characters are extremely one dimensional except maybe Jack Yocke. The dialogue is awfully written and can't Coonts think of any other word for helicopter besides "machine"!? There were numerous plot holes, but I will concede that Coonts made an effort to fix them though somewhat lamely.
This book may be OK for people who have read the other books in the series and have already gotten used to the characters, but if this is going to be the only Coonts book you read, steer clear because it could be your last.
Good Book, great fun.......2003-01-23
This is a good book to read, the plot is ok, the thing that i dont like is that Jake Grafton in this book is almost like a superman, he can fly planes, well ok, but jumping with seals without like he was one for years is not very much real, and handle a squad of SU 27 Flankers with a single Su-25 frogfoot is almost impossible to happen .. i think this is the major faults in the book, the rest is ok .. one of the most improved chracters in this book is Jack Yocke, overall this book is very good to read and the history is well written
Average customer rating:
|
A Comparative Study of Pushkin's "the Bronze Horseman", Nekrasov'S"Red Nose Frost", and Blok's "the Twelve": The Wild World (Studies in Slavic Language and Literature)
A. D. P. Briggs
Manufacturer: Edwin Mellen Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
20th Century
| Poetry
| British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Eastern European
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Russian
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| Classics
| Comic
| Contemporary
| Literary
General
| Criticism & Theory
| History & Criticism
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Poetry
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Single Authors
| Poetry
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| British & Irish
| Continental European
| United States
General
| Foreign Languages
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0889460825 |
Average customer rating:
|
The Red Horseman
Stephen Coonts
Manufacturer: New York: Pocket Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, 1993
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O3KD32 |
Average customer rating:
|
The Red Horseman
Stephen Coonts
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000MX3HG4 |
Amazon.com
Cocaine, writes filmmaker Dominic Streatfeild, "is not some evil spawn of Satan but simply a commodity." Like other commodities, cocaine has a history. When the Spanish conquistadors came to South America and observed that Indians who chewed the leaves of Erythroxylon coca could, it seemed, march over the tallest mountain or through the densest forest for days on end, they knew they were onto something. The newcomers took to growing coca themselves, and in time their product found an audience outside the continent, with users such as Sigmund Freud, Ernest Shackleton (who "took Forced March cocaine tablets to Antarctica in 1909 for the energy boost they gave"), Duke Ellington, and, eventually, half of Hollywood to testify to its powers. Streatfeild's appropriately rapid narrative takes in such key moments and players as "the year of cocaine" 1969, when the film Easy Rider reintroduced the drug to American popular culture, and George Jung, whose exploits are chronicled in Ted Demme's film Blow, to create a portrait of the drug that ranges over centuries. Though he supports legalization, Streatfeild acknowledges the evil and corruption surrounding the trade. Drawing lessons from history, he also suggests the possibility that "cocaine will fizzle out in the year 2015 the way it did in the early twentieth century." At the close of this absorbing book, he adds, "It deserves to." --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
The story of cocaine isn't just about crime and profit; it's about psychoanalysis, about empire building, about exploitation, emancipation, and, ultimately, about power. To tell the story of the twentieth century without reference to this drug and its contribution is to miss a vital and fascinating strand of social history. Streatfeild examines the story of cocaine from its first medical uses to the world-wide chaos it causes today. His research takes him from the arcane reaches of the British Library to the isolation cells of America's most secure prisons; from the crackhouses of New York to the jungles of Bolivia and Colombia.
Customer Reviews:
Great Material but Needed More Editing. .......2007-08-29
Dominic Streatfeild penned an excellent book outlining the nature, history, and effects of coca and cocaine. The unauthorized biography contains just about all the information there is pertaining to this topic. It is also written in a fun and breezy style. My only problem with the text is that it was about 100 pages too long. There are too many asides and too much meandering on tertiary topics in my opinion. The narrative is strongest at the beginning and at the end. Streatfeild's depiction of coca's discovery and indigenous use in South America is absolutely fascinating as are his later chapters on Bolivia, Columbia, and Peru. This is a solid book in need of a bit of tightening.
One of the best books I've ever read.......2007-05-09
I have read this book three times, and it's been a page-turner every time. Streatfield manages to make a history book feel like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend.
The first 150 pages are a little slow, but you need to read this part as Streatfield is giving you important information that is referenced later. The information provided in those first 150 pages are relevant to the topic, not just some collection of data points and useless facts. I'd equate the first part to a very good movie setting up the plot.
Once the book makes it to 1960 and cocaine's resurgance, book some time alone as you will not want to stop reading. Streafield examines all the countries that were/are major players in the coke trade. Most of is information comes from his many interviews with DEA agents, confessed smugglers (such as George Jung) the man who alledgely invented crack, and even the Ochoa family of Colombia. He spends a day in a crack house in Brooklyn, and visits the farmers who are affected by the current US program eliminate coca growing in the Andes.
Though, not a political piece, Streatfield does end the book with some thoughts on current drug laws and policies based on all he learned while researching his book. Much to his credit, he makes is points calmly and logically, and does not beat you over the head with his opinions. This book is perfect for a vacation or a long flight. It's and easy and fun read.
A tome worth reading.......2006-10-23
As a pharmacist, I figured I would get a little bit of "cocaine" history. I got that, plus a view on American vs. Central American politics that was an eye-opener. This book has made me question the motives of American government in the war on drugs, and changed how I view the narcotics trade in general. Very well researched and political.
Great History Lesson.......2006-06-28
If people took more time to read, perhaps we could avoid the idiotic things like the War on Drugs, or, the War on Terror.
Simply Wonderful.......2006-01-06
For those of you with a lot of time and imagination on your hands, I highly recommend Dominic Streatfeild's history of cocaine. It'll probably be the most fascinating beach read you'll ever pick up and as he drives us from the Incas to Pablo Escobar, Streatfeild's sense of adventure is contagious.
His prose is funny and not as heavy-handed as some researchers'. I think that if all history came in this format, American schools wouldn't have so many problems with disinterested teenagers.
The fact that Streatfeild includes himself and his shenanigans in the book may seem unprofessional to some, but to me, it made the book a hell of a lot more fun to read. I really hope to read more of his work in the future (I wouldn't mind a thorough history of opium, because Martin Booth's version is hardly as readable as this).
Customer Reviews:
Wondering starts the process of learning........2007-01-27
In the Connoisseur's Guide to the Mind, Roger Shank uses his love of great food to teach us about how human beings learn and think, primarily through the process of remembering and indexing. I think the best way to learn what a non-fiction book is about is through a series of quotes taken from the book.
If everything happens the way you expected it to happen, you may well be happy, but you won't learn a thing. To learn we need expectation failure. Further, we need expectation failure we can cope with. The failures have to be small rather than large. (p.153)
All important knowledge is in the form of expectations. (p.50)
Expectations come from prior generalizations. (p.155)
"We must evaluate our experiences in terms of what we can learn from them in order to learn from them. Remembering everything actually prevents you from concentrating on what can be learned...
We have a major problem, therefore, when we begin to learn something new. We must alter our knowledge base by adding what we are now processing to what we already know. But where exactly do we add the new information? Where does a new episode belong?
This question is not frivolous, although it is not one that any of us is prepared to answer consciously. To give you a sense of the problem imagine that I have been presented with a long-forgotten Minnesota establishment as a remembrance of the evening, and that, it so happened, I have a copy of the menu of every meal that I have ever eaten. Imagine that I live in a house full of menus. Where should I put the Minnesota menu?
I could choose to file all my menus by date. In that case, the filing would be easy, but the retrieval would be difficult. I would never be able to find this meal unless I knew the date, but I might want to remember a meal by some other more significant aspect associated with it. The food, for example. Suppose that I meet Jean-Francois, and he happens to mention the dessert we ate at Jamin. I immediately rush home to my file of menus to find the one from the particular night at Jamin to which he is referring. But where do I look? If I have filed all the menus by their dates, I will need to recall the date of the meal in question to retrieve the right menu. Well, it was in March of last year; perhaps I can find it this way. But, then he mentions that he thought that the dessert at Zur Trabe was better. Oh my, when was that? A couple of years ago, but I don't even know what time of year. It was on a business trip, and that could have taken place at anytime. I remember the weather was cool, but that just means it wasn't the dead of winter or the middle of summer. No this cannot be a good filing system, but what would be a better one be?
How about if I put all the menus from great meals in one cabinet, filed alphabetically by restaurant name? And how about if I put all the pretty good meals in another cabinet, but this time filed by location? This way, if someone asked me the name of a great restaurant in Florida, I could look it up in the great meal file - otherwise I look for it in the Florida file. But if these files were very big, I'd still have trouble finding anything. Having copies of menus would be better so that I could put the one from Bern's Steak House in the Florida file and in the great wine list file, while hedging on whether it belonged in the great meal file.
The problem here is that this model isn't of much use. We cannot be filing memories by date or by alphabet or by the greatness of the dessert. Particular episodes have to be torn apart and labeled in many different ways. One particular dessert at Jamin is wonderful, and I have had it three times. I remember each meal because they were all special. I remember who was there and what we ate. And, if you mention the names of certain people whom I ate with there and nowhere else, or you mention great restaurants or you mention the best lamb you ever ate, these items will cause Jamin to come to mind, too. Episodes in memory are not menus looking for filing cabinets. We remember something in many different ways by ripping an episode to shreds, putting it in a Xerox machine, and distributing the many copies of the many pieces to many different filing cabinets. (pages 74 & 75)
Language is telegraphic. People say as little as possible, as if they are sending a telegram and paying by the word. Your job as an understander is to figure out what else they would tell you if they had the time and the inclination. (p.59)
The critical thing here is background knowledge. The more you know about a situation, the more you can assume about events that occur within that situation. Scripts represent the default background knowledge that we have without ever having experienced something directly. (p.89)
Learning occurs when we cannot fill a slot with what has usually filled that slot, or when we cannot even determined what slots need to be filled, or when we cannot determined what mental structure should be available to provide slots to fill. (p.52)
Every time we are reminded of some experience by some other experience, the value is in the potential for learning. We cannot remember every experience that happens to us. Instead we remember the exceptions, the oddities, the events that did not conform to our expectations. (p.126)
Book Description
What begins as a wildlife research project becomes much more as the author and his wife learn to hear the earth, pay attention to their dreams and slowly change, beyond their expectations, into being caribou.
·Wildlife biologist Karsten Heuer and filmmaker Leanne Allison spend five months migrating on foot with more than 100,000 caribou
·Both gripping adventure and stark portrayal of an Arctic ecosystem threatened by oil development
·Fresh off a nine-city tour in Spring 2005 for his book, Walking the Big Wild, the author will tour in Fall 2005 for this new book and a film by the same name
In April 2003 newlyweds Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison embarked on a five-month research journey to migrate more than 2,000 miles with a herd of 120,000 Porcupine Caribou. From Old Crow, Yukon, to the calving grounds in Alaska, and back again, the Heuers followed the ancient paths and primordial rhythms of the herd from its winter range through Canada and across the border to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the United States. The couple traveled by foot and by skis through unforgiving landscapes—fording swift, deadly cold rivers, as well as encountering ravenous grizzlies who tracked them as prey.
Having begun their expedition with the practiced pragmatism of two seasoned outdoor adventurers, Karsten and Leanne soon learned that they would only be able to find and discern the intent of the herd by adopting the ancient ways of the area's indigenous people. Given advice by a Gwich'in native in Old Crow at the start of their trip to "listen to dreams", Karsten and Leanne find they must shed the many insulating layers of pragmatism that distance them from the natural world. They discover that there is a truth that is transformational in listening to the music of the earth, paying attention to the urgings within dreams, and in truly, beyond their expectations, being caribou.
Customer Reviews:
in the footsteps of the caribou.......2006-11-14
Having enjoyed the movie by the same title, I decided to read Heuer's book in the hope that it would fill in more of the details of this epic journey in the footsteps of the Porcupine herd of caribou. Without detracting from the movie, the book provides more insight into those aspects of the story that could not easily be addressed on film, such as logistics, nature observations, the passage of days, and the more personal side of what, at times, must have seemed an impossible journey.
While the narrative follows the progress of the caribou herd's trek along a continuum spanning three seasons, it is interwoven with backflashes to planning and preparation for the expedition, reflections on the ecological and cultural place occupied by caribou, and forays into the politics of oil exploration and its impact on the Arctic wildlife.
Having now watched the movie and read the book, I remain amazed at the logistics of this journey -- from both the perspective of this expedition, and for the caribou which they follow. The book fleshed in much of what I suspected from the start -- that the annual migration of the caribou is a grueling marathon through a landscape that is both beautiful, but fraught with perils far beyond our imaginings.
From the perspective of adventure writing, Heuer delivers a fast-paced narrative that provides a good understanding of the landscape and the logistics of the journey. We are given enough details to vicariously feel the weight of a 70 pound backpack, the chill of wading a half-frozen river, and the helpless sense of frustration while watching a lost caribou calf straying from the herd to certain death on the tundra. We're given a generous glimpse into the thoughts of the writer as he and his partner face fear, pain, and fatigue, but also experience joy, excitement, and a growing respect for the caribou - as well as a grave concern for their future.
But this book should be regarded as much more than a travel or adventure narrative. It provides a much-needed window into the lives of the caribou and their place in the unique and fragile web of Arctic ecology. It also provides a background to the political and environmental issues that endanger the future of the north.
Pretty good.......2006-10-19
His message on the caribou herd is 5 star message. It is a shame what may happen to the caribou herd if or when drilling happens. All in all a pretty good book.
Adventure in a Place Most of us Will Never Visit.......2006-10-19
It takes a special kind of couple to spend their honeymoon following a herd of caribou across northern Canada and Alaska for four months. Getting used to each other is hard enough, but then to be swimming rivers that are barely free of ice, to climb mountain ranges in the snow, meeting up with grizzly bears that are not overly friendly.
They traveled over a thousand miles to study the caribou to produce a film of their migration to the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The flyleaf of the book says that it is an 'Adventure Narrative' and it is. It's also a lot more than that as most of us don't know what the current debate about drilling for oil and gas in the ANWR is all about. Needless to say, as a wildlife biologist the author has very definite views on the subject.
The ANWR is a place that most of us will never see. It's a place that most people never heard of. And unfortunately, it's probably a place that will be damaged, if not destroyed in the search for energy. As a congresswoman told the author: 'the bottom line for voters on this issue is cheap gas.'
This book is a story of the life of teh animals in the north, and of the people who study them. It's a story worth reading about. Thank you Mr. Heuer for bringing this to our attention.
Why ANWR must be preserved, even made a Nat'l Monument or Park.......2006-08-12
Husband and wife team of Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison decide to spend their honeymoon in just about the most off-the-beaten-track way possible: they're going to migrate with caribou.
Not just any caribou, but the Porcupine herd of northern Canada and Alaska, the herd whose calving ground is the 1002 Section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the place where Exxon wants to drill to get what will likely be less than six months, maybe one year's worth of U.S. needs of oil supply.
So, skiing and hiking, the duo spend April-September 2003 covering hundreds of miles in the wake of thousands of caribou, starting from Canada's Yukon, going into Alaska, then coming back. On the way, they cross and recross multiple mountain ranges and rivers, the latter frozen on the way up and roiling currents on the way back, battle swarms of summer mosquitoes and other bugs, cut their food budget tight between plane drops, and make psychological connections with both the herd instinct of the caribou and with each other as newlyweds.
Portraying the caribou instinct as a more jazzy, free-form version of the salmon's drive to spawn, their trek sheds valuable new light on caribou activities. It also underscores the fragility and the absolute importance of ANWR's 1002 Section.
To see just what is at stake on the side of the aisle opposite Exxon, and to fall in love with the Arctic North, read this book. Sixteen pages of full-color plates provide a wonderful photographic sidebar.
Being Caribou.......2006-05-10
Karsten Heuer and his wife, Leanne, follow the Porcupine Herd of caribou in their migration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Not only an interesting memoir of a journey fraught with difficult ground, mosquitoes and grizzly bears, but a moving account of the many dangers faced by caribou as they struggle to survive -- dangers that will be increased if the ANWR is opened to oil exploration and drilling. Heuer's writing successfully evokes the connection he and Leanne come to feel with the caribou and their alienation from the artificial rush of civilization.
The book makes a powerful argument for lasting conservationist values and against destruction for the short-term profit of a few. It seems too much to hope, though, that it will actually be able to do any good.
Book Description
In one of the earth’s most amazing migrations, more than 100,000 caribou trek thousands of miles each year over high mountain ranges, through snowy passes, and across icy rivers. But they have to battle more than just the brutal elements. Hungry wolves, huge grizzly bears, human hunters, and hordes of bloodthirsty insects besiege the herd as it travels to its one safe haven—Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There, those that survive the trip have a few peaceful weeks to give birth and prepare their calves for the harsh year ahead.
Karsten Heuer and his wife, Leanne Allison, are the only humans ever to become part of a caribou herd and join it on its arduous journey. They shared the same mind-numbing cold, the endless miles of physical hardship, and all the dangers along the route to chronicle the epic battle for survival these animals face. To keep up, they had to move, act, and even think like caribou. Karsten and Leanne’s incredible adventure gives us a window into a world that we have never seen before.
Books:
- The Rommel Papers (Da Capo Paperback)
- The Spartan Army (Elite)
- The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy
- The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East
- Two Survived
- Ultimate Sniper 2006 : An Advanced Training Manual for Military and Police Snipers (Ultimate Sniper, 2006 New and Updated!)
- Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing And Airborne Operations On D-Day, June 6, 1944
- Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution
- Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation
- Vietnam Wars 1945-1990
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Frontiersmen: A Narrative
- Mapping the World of the Sorcerer's Apprentice
- Quarantine: A Novel
- Positive Addiction
- Mind Gym : An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence
- Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest: A Photographic Encyclopedia of Invertebrates, Seaweeds And Sel
- Public Health, Third Edition: What It Is and How It Works
- Birds, Beasts, and Relatives
- Last Days of Glory: The Death of Queen Victoria
- WHAT WILDFLOWER IS THAT
