High Crimes, by Michael Kodas

This audiobook was 11 hours and 23 minutes long, and was downloaded from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Library. It was narrated by Mark Deakins.

This book is part True Adventure and part Investigative Reporting. Like other books about recent climbs on Mt. Everest, it is a harrowing tale of well-off adventurers meeting the ultimate equalizer. These people pay up to $60,000 each to be taken on an attempt to summit Mt. Everest, and some never come back. Some return to have severely frostbitten fingers and toes amputated. It is a sobering look at what a dangerous proposition this trip can be.

If the mountain and the awful climate are not bad enough, Michael Kodas uncovers a dirty secret: the other people on the mountain can be just as dangerous. And they can also be a bunch of crooks.

In the past couple of decades, climbing Mount Everest and other 20K peaks has become a thriving business for some, and the rich climbers are the unwitting prey of others. Unscrupulous guides can abandon their meal ticket on the mountain after they have already been paid. Poor Sherpas may steal the supplementary oxygen canisters from rich climbers and resell them to other rich climbers, leaving the first climbers in peril. And angry guides, who don't like what you have siad about them on your blog, may want you to die. It's all enough to make you take up something safer, like lion-taming.

This was a thoroughly engrossing story about specific miscreants on the big mountain, and it was never boring. I give it 4 stars.

Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer

This audiobook was obtained from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Library website. It was 7 hours and 6 minutes long.

This book originally came out in 1996, but is now getting fresh attention because it has recently been made into a movie. It's the story of Chris McCandless, a 24 year old Emory University graduate who forsakes modern life to become a modern Henry David Thoreau. Without telling his family, who all believe he will be attending law school, he gives away his college fund, starts using an assumed name, and heads out west to live a life at loose ends. His travels take him to remote places, from Mexico to the Dakotas, and ultimately to the Alaskan wilderness. It is there, at life's extremities, and with no help in sight, that he comes to a miserable end.

Krakauer tells this story as only another person who enjoys extreme living can tell it. He helps you to get to know Chris McCandless by exhaustive research, including Chris' last written accounts and interviews with the people who were touched by him along the way, and through his own insight as a person who has been bewitched by the wilderness experience. You may come away admiring or pitying Chris McCandless, but you will not be able to forget him. I know that I want to see the movie when it comes out. I give this one 4 stars.

East to the Dawn, by Susan Butler

This audiobook was obtained from Overdrive Audio for free through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 18 hours and 43 minutes long, and was narrated by Anna Fields.

This is the story that goes beyond the legend, and beyond the comfort zone of many who may have admired her. She was a brave and daring aviator, an outspoken feminist, and a bit of a head case.

Back in the early days of aviation, there was very little regulation and it was one of the places where women had the most freedom. Amelia Earhart learned to fly from another woman pioneer, Neta Snook. Amelia had learned about mechanics from her days as an ambulance driver during WWI, when you also had to know how to fix your vehicle. And it's a good thing, because early airplanes needed to be fixed often.

Flying was just a hobby for her for several years. She was earning her living as a social worker. Other women were looking to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic after Charles Lindbergh had become an international celebrity for doing so. American socialite named Amy Guest, who was also a pilot, had wanted to do it, but her family made her back off. She still wanted the project to go on, so she offered to back someone else that she would recruit who would have the right image and do women proud.

Amelia Earhart got the call from a promoter who had heard of her, and asked if she wanted to fly across the Atlantic. Amelia jumped at it, and it made her fortune. She used it as a springboard for a speaking and publishing career.

Amelia eventually married her publisher, who had been married when they first began working together. She didn't want to be tied to one man, however, and actually requested that theirs would be an open marriage.

This book chronicles Amelia's life from early childhood to her disappearance over the Pacific in 1937. Very little is left unexplored, and it done in a sympathetic manner. It's hard to put down, and full of interesting information. That's what makes it a four star book for me.

River of Doubt, by Candice Millard

This audiobook was found at the Alachua County Public Library, came on 10 CDs, and was narrated by Paul Michael.

When my customers find out what an audiobook junkie I am, they sometimes make suggestions to me from their own reading. This year, someone told me about "River of Doubt" and I was immediately intrigued because I am a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt. I could not find this title for awhile, and even now it is unavailable at Amazon.com. But one day a search on the library website turned it up, and I put it on reserve. It was waiting for me when I got back from vacation.

This is a wonderful mix of history, biography, and suspenseful adventure. Any one of those descriptions is enough to lure me in, but all three, combined with Theodore Roosevelt risking life and limb in the Amazon jungle as a form of post-election therapy makes this unforgettable. Candice Millard takes you there with research that would rate as overkill if it were about anyone else.

It's both gripping and sad, as it also turns into a father and son examination. TR and his third son, Kermit, near-lethal hardships and acquit themselves admirably. Kermit was very much his father's son when it came to physical endurance and toughness in the midst of calamity. But away from the snake and cannibal infested testing ground, they were two totally different men.

I will avoid the spoilers and say that this is a 4 star delight, whether you are a history buff or and adrenaline junkie.

Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson

This book was from the Alachua County Library, was an unabridged audiobook on 13 CDs, and was read by Michael Prichard.

If you are a big fan of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels on audio, you will feel right at home with the familiar voice of Michael Prichard. His is the perfect voice for these stories of the deep. The big difference is that this is a true story without the campy characters to make your eyes roll.

After a fisherman snags his nets on a mysterious wreck, he brings it to the attention of a legendary diver who has gone to seed named Bill Nagel. This man knows he will need the help of the very best divers he can find, so he assembles a team of experienced men who are willing to take a chance.

One of the men who answers the call is John Chatterton, a former army medic who is a commercial diver. He makes the discovery that what they have found is a submarine of unknown origin. It is at a depth of about 230 feet, which is a very dangerous place for any diver to work.

It is 7 years and 3 dead divers before Chatterton and a later addition to the team, Richie Kohler, finally uncover the identity of what they knew was a WW2 German U-boat with its full crew of skeletal dead. They defy death, personal tragedy, and the record of history in their dogged pursuit of truth about the men who died off the coast of New Jersey in the 1940s. And eventually they find closure for themselves and the families of the German sailors who died half a century before.

This was a very moving story about the men who became obsessed with their own personal search for truth. From John Chatterton's search for himself as a medic in Viet Nam to the recreation of the lives of the men who died on the U-boat, as told by the crew member who missed the boat to eternity, this story will get inside your head and your heart all the way to the end.

As a special bonus, there is an interview at the end with John Chatterton and Richie Kohler. As a special bonus to you now, there is a great website about the wreck they found, and it's right here! This book was a 4 star masterpiece.