Rating: 
Summary: Real Life
Review: This book is filled with true stories of people who live for excitement or have no other choice of jobs. It is gripping and begs that you stay awake for yet another page or three, long past your bedtime. Just buy it!
Rating:
Summary: Real Life
Review: This book is filled with true stories of people who live for excitement or have no other choice of jobs. It is gripping and begs that you stay awake for yet another page or three, long past your bedtime. Just buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Thrilling Boat and Sea Adventure
Review: This book reminds me of the bumper sticker which reads: If you are living on the edge you are taking up too much room. The writer recounts superbly with detail and description his stints of fishing for King Crab in the great Alaska fishing grounds. Since the power and fascination of the book lies in the tremendous hardship the crewmen endure, it is imperative that the writer relate this harshness in all its subtle and biting forms. He does this with aplomb. I wish he would write about his oil and logging adventures as well. Score one for Newport, Oregon and OSU !
Rating:
Summary: Spell binding excitement
Review: This book should be on the best seller list for nonfiction adventure. Those who have been to sea will relive your worst nightmares; those who haven't will be able to feel the experience as never before. All can relate to Walker's descriptions of what drives the human spirit onward. Don't miss this one!!!!!
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Summary: A Macho Man's Book, Yet I loved every page and I'm a woman!
Review: This is a very exciting book for either gender. I lived in Chiniak, on Kodiak Island and my dad was a commercial crab and salmon fisherman on a boat of much smaller scale than the ones referred to in the book. They were known as The Little Fishermen---daddy's boat was 34 feet. He told tales of 30 foot waves crashing across his bow just as Spike Walker tells so vividly in his book. He also told of the dangerous conditions that the fishermen faced in the treacherous Alaskan waters . He had a few tales to tell himself. He was a retired Naval Officer who always dreamed of going to Kodiak and having a fishing boat. He requested Kodiak as his last tour of duty before retiring from 23 years of Naval Service. He built a Log Cabin in Chiniak and bought a boat which he named after me---The Anna J. It is still in service, last I heard owned by Larry Anderson. This book meant a lot to me as some of the names of crewmen,skippers,ports of call and havens from perilous weather rekindled memories of stories told to me by my dad. Mr. Walker's book full of harrowing experiences of life and death paralleled the ones dad told me. My dad would have enjoyed this book so much, but since he is no longer with us I will say for the both of us ----A Great Book Mr. Walker! Sincerely, Anna J. Durham Hills
Rating:
Summary: This is the one you've been looking for
Review: This may be the best book I've ever read. Simply could not put it down. I will recommend it highly to anyone looking for high seas adventures. Even if you are not a seaman this book is still a "5". Order it now, you won't be sorry.
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Summary: Added a new dimension to my perception of the world
Review: Walker brought me right into the skin of a youthful, 245-pound man with an oil rigger's and lumberjack's experience, who arrived in Kodiak in 1978 with $20 in his pocket, drawn by the lure of high adventure and easy money. When the crabs were running there was almost no sleep, backbreaking labor, and constant danger in sub-zero temperatures and storms at sea.Rewards for the hearty were steep, however. Crewman had shares in the ship's profits and, if the crabs were running well, could pull in $40,000 or more in a single 29-day stint at sea. No wonder Alaska was attracting all these young men and a few courageous women. There's hardships and joy, elation and despair, physical feats of survival and courage more exciting than any fiction. The detailed descriptions of the beauty of the land and the realities of nature pulled me right from my life in New York City and set me down next to Walker as he worked with fellow crewman pulling 2000 pound pots of crab from the sea. I felt the frigid wind, the tossing deck, the constant icy spray of seawater. I reeked with seasickness and fatigue and the camaraderie of the crewmen. I celebrated my new found riches in the one bar in town, and mourned the tragic deaths from the whims of nature. This is also the story of the fishing industry itself. It's the story of greed. And massive investments in technology which plundered the seas of their resources. Its the story of boom and bust and human endurance. And it will forever add a new dimension to my perception of the world.
Rating:
Summary: Reading on the Edge!!!!
Review: Walker puts you in his hip pocket and takes you out to sea. Arm in arm, Walker took me through finding a job on a crabbing boat to trolling the boomtown bars. While he was putting in 24 hour days crabbing I was exhausted, when he was enduring subzero temperatures I froze. His research brings the reader onto a boat then immerses him into a freezing sea. This real life account is 5 times the action as A Perfect Storm.
Rating:
Summary: Wild Ride....
Review: While in college I too wanted to try this Alaskan, high-dollar, fishing stuff...little did I know.... Very good account of what it's like out there...not only must you brave the elements and the work, but one must brave the human relationships that teter and toter around such work. Good Read.
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