Laurence Gonzales

I had chills. They were multiplyin'. Gonzales grabs you by the throat and refuses to let you breathe for several hundred pages. This is a masterwork of construction, and for the reader, he or she will find several survivors or casualties with whom to identify. The stories are that rich, full, and personal. The story is so well put-together, that the author should be hired by the NTSB to compile the full facts any time there's an accident. Strangely satisfying are also the threads that could show more not be tied: the money on the plane, the identity of the inspector, etc. Also fascinating, and revealed very well are the dichotomy of human frailty and resilience. Some of us have one, some the other, some both. They're all here. We are all in this book. It is amazing. Remember to try to breathe every dozen or so pages. You'll need it to wrestle loose the lump in your throat. show less

A mostly engaging ride that stalls out intermittently: the book could have been improved by editing it down just a little. Instead of trying to weave three different stories (that of survivors, of his father’s survival, and his own risk taking) the author should have chosen two out of three for greater reader impact. Leave out either his father’s story, his own, or compress the two into a tighter narrative, a “flip side of the same coin” thing or study in contrasts. There was also show more some redundancy in the stories of survival. It’s incredibly tempting to want to share everything you’ve amassed but the best writers resist that urge.

Having said that, the book certainly is worthwhile and there are several strong insights into what personality traits set the best foundation for survival in any kind of situation, not just wilderness. In fact, the entire premise would have been better backed up by featuring survival stories that did NOT take place in an adventure scenario.

Gonzales writes: “One of the toughest steps a survivor has to take is to discard the hope of rescue, just as he discards the old world he left behind and accepts the new one. There is no other way for his brain to settle down. Although that idea seems paradoxical, it is essential.” If we do nothing else in enabling our survival, it is to “perceive and believe” the reality around us rather than fighting to make it conform to our mental maps of what should be, what should work; to turn fear into focus. show less

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales, was a pick of my monthly book club that I greeted with some ambivalence at first. As it turned out, it was a highly satisfying read that was nothing like what I anticipated from scanning the back cover.
The book is more or less divided into two parts, although there is no real hard division as such. The first half of the narrative tends to dwell on those who find themselves in critically dangerous arenas who make bad show more decisions and die. Surprisingly, it turns out that the worst survivors are the “Rambo-types” who don’t take danger very seriously at all. There is one story of comic-poignancy of a badass Army Ranger who is swept off of a raft and cavalierly ignores the efforts of a guide to save him, seemingly because he thought he could easily rescue himself: he was sucked under a boulder and drowned.
Gradually, the chapters flow into accounts of those who manage to survive, often under impossible circumstances, from aircraft crashes in the remote mountains to badly injured rock climbers to deep ocean lifeboat survivors. While the people who die often don’t have a great deal in common, the ones who survive do have apparent similarities in their outlook and their stubborn refusal to succumb. Frequently, it is luck alone that has spared them in the initial catastrophe, but it is their determination to survive and the practical and emotional steps they take to achieve that which contributes to that ultimate survival.
Gonzales, who seems to have spent his entire life chasing danger in every arena from motorcycles to rock climbing to flying stunt aircraft, tells us that he became interested in survival because of his own father’s experience as a severely injured World War II pilot, the lone survivor of his plane’s crash, who can credit both good luck and his own mental focus and perseverance for a long, painful, and unlikely survival in horrific conditions as a POW after being shot down. Laying there with his nose ripped off and most of the bones in his limbs broken, he literally stares death in the face again as the gun of a German farmer intent on executing him misfires before his proper capture by enemy troops. Inspired by his father’s almost incomprehensible survival, Gonzales not only dedicates his life to chasing danger, but also to the study of who is most likely to make it when the odds go way against you.
It is not just all an adventure tale, however. Gonzales injects into the storyline a number of esoteric scientific references to such things as chaos theory, as well as the physiological makeup of the brain and how it reacts to the less than optimal conditions many of his protagonists find themselves in before succumbing to their conditions or ultimately succeeding in getting out alive. He makes a convincing argument that mental focus and optimism is the most critical factor, that while even those with the best mental orientation who make all of the right decisions can still die, they are far less likely to than their peers who panic or treat danger with insouciance or simply give up. The narrative is also peppered with a wide range of literary references that reveal the author to be very well read in the humanities, from Herodotus to Remarque to the Tao Te Ching. It is obvious that he has long meditated upon the philosophical element of his central theme, and the interspersed turns to both science and literature not only provide a solid intellectual foundation but further underscore his own deep commitment to his conclusions as to which individuals are more likely to live or die.
Fortunately, I have never found myself in the kind of survival situations Gonzales discusses in this fine book, but as one who has done a bit of AT backpacking, I have indeed encountered places and events that could very well have provided the proving ground. I would recommend this book not only to those who go into the wild, but to every soul who walks the planet: you could be in an office building that catches fire or in your basement as a tornado dissolves your home. It is not only a good read, but the lessons Gonzales imparts here could very well save your life. show less

This is a story of impossibility. A Douglas DC-10 should never be able to stay flying after losing all hydraulic systems, and yet the crew of Flight 232 were able to keep it in the air under exactly these circumstances. When Flight 232 hit the ground and a fireball erupted, first responders thought everyone would have been killed, and yet more than half the people aboard (about 60%) survived.

And like many stories of aircraft accidents, this is a story of multiple factors and circumstances show more combining at exactly the “right” time to create the conditions that led to the accident. It is a story, too, of safety improvements that have made commercial aviation the highly safe mode of transportation it is today.

That’s the story. As for this book, I’m not sure that this is the best way to tell that story. The author has chosen to weave all of the various threads together into a single running storyline; the narrative jumps from the passengers’ view to the cockpit, from air traffic control to the survivors 20 years on, then back to the cockpit, then to the passengers, then to the NTSB investigators… It’s dizzying and hard to keep everyone straight, not to mention disheartening when a passenger is first introduced and we learn immediately that they’re going to die, or be severely burned, or be otherwise injured.

I also found it deeply upsetting to see some of the photos in the middle of the book. It’s one thing to show pictures of the wreckage on the runway or the taxiway—in fact, seeing the wreckage is instructive, particularly of the tail and the cockpit, and particularly the cockpit, which looked so damaged that people didn’t realize for over half an hour that all of the pilots and other flight crew had survived and were trapped inside. What was upsetting was to see wreckage on the runway along with marks on the runway that were left behind by bodies—HUMAN REMAINS. I think the wreckage could (and should) have been shown in a way that cropped out the marks.

For these reasons (confusing storytelling and upsetting photos), I stopped reading the book, and will instead be reading the NTSB’s report on the incident. The NTSB report will focus on the technical details and the safety improvements that could be made, and not dwelling on the gruesome details of death and injury. show less