Rating: 
Summary: Bad luck is addicted to Jim Wickwire !
Review: I couldn't put it down. And I couldn't think who'd team up with him after all the bad luck that follows him. Or is that what you get when you compress 25 years of climbing into 295 pages? His life and death, and death, and death.....stories are the very reason I keep coming back to the great mountain books. Addicted to Danger helped me seperate my ego from my responsibilities. Read it!
Rating: 
Summary: Hated the author loved his story!
Review: From someone who does not often read adventure books I could not put this one down. Now I have this strange need to climb something. I found myself hating the autor for the type of person he seems to be but loving his story. Sounds strange? You will understand when you read this book and I think you should.
Rating: 
Summary: How depressing!
Review: Jim Wickwire is certainly one of the top climbers of recent years, but he doesn't seem to have had much fun doing it! This book dwells at great length on one disaster and failure after another (on and off the mountains), while skipping over many of Wickwire's successful climbs, often with a comment over what a letdown it was after reaching the summit. And the part of the book about his greatest triumph (the K2 ascent) ends up being mostly about bickering among the team members! My suspicion (just a guess) is that the negative slant may be largely the fault of his co-author. Incidentally, peeking ahead while reading, I saw the picture of Wickwire's wife near the end, and was fully expecting the last chapter to be about her filing for divorce! To my surprise, she hasn't (she's willing to put up with more than I would have, I guess), but I wish Jim more enjoyment from his retirement from climbing than he had from his climbing.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling reading
Review: I'm not a mountain climber. I'm the person who always said 'why would that person put his/her life at risk, when there's a family involved?' I'm having to change my thinking. As I read the reviews of people who are feeling so terribly sorry for his wife, I have to agree with the person who said, 'if he were a different kind of man, she probably wouldn't have been interested in him.' They are a strong team. Whether that was good for the children or not--who can say--but they were both responsible for the children, not just Jim, so both can be praised or damned equally. I can't imagine that 'his wife' thinks of herself as a poor thing. She sounds like a very capable person who is getting along very well, thank you very much. Anyway, I found the book fascinating in a way I didn't expect and it has sent me scouring the bookstores for more of the same.
Rating: 
Summary: great climber, lousy writer, terrible person
Review: Jim Wickwire is an outstanding mountaineer and probably a good lawyer. He should have been satisfied by that. Instead, he penned a poorly written, fairly dull and thoroughly unsatisfying account. His arrogant, callous, and selfish personality shines throughout this book. My sympathies to his wife and family. Worse, his expressions of regret and concern about his family seem mechanical and self-serving. I'm always struck, when reading these types of books, that the author tosses in a suggestion that it was hard on the wife or kids (in this case his daughter Anne) but oh, hey, it all worked out., she got over it. etc. I would have thought more of him if he had been at least honest. All in all, I suggest you don't bother with this book unless you've read almost everything else on climbing.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting book but what a narcissist!
Review: I don't know what I found so compelling about this book - the wonderful descriptions of the dangers of climbing or the awful egocentricity of the man in which he proffers guilt-laden compliments about his wife without really coming across as knowing her, the rationalizations from which come the "addicted" part of the title, but clearly here was man driven by macho competition much to the detriment of his own emotional development. If this book serves as an apology to his wife and children, it lacks the insight - but the physical descriptions of climbing are breath-taking.
Rating:
Summary: The reality of Addicted to Danger lets you escape the world.
Review: Addicted to Danger has a reality to it that many books lack. The sheer honesty of it takes you up into the highest mountains with Jim and lets you escape the world as you truly discover what the world is. I would highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Educational and fascinating!
Review: What an amazing life Jim Wickwire has led. Although I was frustrated at times, like other reviewers, of Jim's willingness to risk everything important in his life for the thrill of reaching the summit, I really enjoyed this book. I learned an amazing amount about mountain climbing in a way that didn't bore me or become bogged down with details. It was fascinating. The one thing I never did learn was why a man would continue to climb mountain after mountain even after seeing friend after friend die before his eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling! Tremendous!
Review: After reading accounts about the author's expeditions to Everest in 1982 and in 1984 in Lou Whitaker's "Memoirs of a Mountain Guide," and viewing the documentary "Winds of Everest," I wanted to learn more about him, his drive to leave everything behind and risk it all for danger. Wickwire does a fantastic job taking you to the extreme environments in which so few people thrive as he did. He also effectively conveyed the essence of his desire to sacrifice his family life for months at a time to pursue his dreams. While this is difficult for many of us to understand, he left me with the impression that his family wouldn't have loved the same man had he not sought the danger he describes in his book. His brutal honesty with regard to Marty Hoey left me admiring the strength of his marriage given the human frailty that inevitably enters every human relationship.As a mountaineering want-to-be who has spent a limited amount of time in the mountains climbing, I find it exhilerating to live these experiences vicariously through Wickwire's tome.
Rating:
Summary: Quiters never win and winners never quit!
Review: This is an astonishing story of a man who refuses to yeild to adversity. Truely inspiring to thoes of us who shutter even at the thought of uncomfortable temperatures and steep, unstable places, let alone no oxygen to breath! Yes, it does matter how you do it, and Jim doggedly forges ahead with his visions of success and supreme instincts even in the face of countless failures. He is one of lifes great adverturists' bringing back the rich stories of what it takes on the outward bound. I am not a mountian climber, but am truely facinated by the breed. Form a new perspective on life!
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