Inspirational. Mike May has amazing courage. ( )

Truly inspiring. I loved Kurson's work in Shadow Diver's and was not disappointed by this book. Without giving too much away, the basic idea is a man who lost his vision in a childhood accident, but who never allowed it to be a disability, faces a possibility of regaining his sight as an adult. ( )

Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See by Robert Kurson truly tells an amazing story. Robert May wasn't born blind, but a childhood accident when he was three years old caused him to become blind due to the chemical burns his eyes received. His mother's refusal to treat him as handicapped coupled with Mike's own tenacity enabled him to grow up defying the typical streotypes associated with blind people. He literally "crashed through" them by using his brain to develop ways of doing the things he wanted to do--like ride a bike, hike alone in the woods, ski, travel, and many other things that even sighted people hesitate to try. His philosophy is that getting lost is part of the fun and it is truly inspiring to hear about his adventures and courage when facing challenges. The book shifts back and forth from telling the story of May's life to explaining how at age 46 May discovered that due to advances in the treatments available for blindness he was a good candidate for a procedure that could enable him to see. As the story follows May through his decision process, the reader learns a lot about this particular medical procedure and a lot about May, who has to weigh his current contentment and satisifaction with his busy life with the risks of the procedure and the uncertain benefits sight would give him.

I am thoroughly enjoying listening to every bit of this story. The narrator, Doug Ordunio, reads with a nice even tone well suited for this non-fiction memoir. One annoyance--I don't like audiobooks that give you no cues at the end of each CD but rather leave it to the listener to figure out it is time to change to the next disc. Anyway, I find May's enthusiasm for life and determination to not let anything stop him totally inspiring. Here is a man who skied in the Olympics, travelled to Africa (alone except for his seeing eye dog), worked for the CIA, started his own business, and I could go on and on. What is stopping the rest of us from following our dreams like this? I also thought the medical information was fascinating as were the descriptions of the perception problems of blind people who have their vision restored. This book informs, inspires, and challenges the reader to use his or her senses to their fullest potential. I highly suggest giving it a read or a listen. A bonus on the audiobook is that the last disc has an interview with the author and May which adds even more insight into this fascinating story. ( )

When an operation in middle-age restores the sight of a man blinded at the age of three, he is unable to see in the way that both he and his doctors expected. This fascinating book shows how our brain recognizes(or doesn't)what we see.

Despite the fact that Mike May was a rather remarkable blind person, I found this book to be much less than remarkable. The storytelling plods, the details of Mike’s life bore, and even when Mike was learning to see, I grew quickly tired of figuring out along with Mike: that must be a shadow! Is that a giraffe? Etc. It seemed like the author left out interesting details (how does a blind man take a geometry class designed for sighted people anyway?) in favor of the mundanities of married life, or being a father. Mike is portrayed as a nearly flawless human (relationship trouble between he and his wife were glazed over, for example) and a hero, and I came away, after forcing myself through dry, telling prose, frustrated, and wanting to know the “real” story. His story could have been told much more engagingly and to greater effect in a magazine article rather than 300 trudging pages of and then Mike did this, and then he did this, and then he thought this. This is a book you “get” from the title: Crashing Through: A Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See. What more do you need to know? ( )