Addicted to Danger: A Memoir about Affirming Life in the Face of Death

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful novel that kept me reading--A real page turner
Review: After attending a lecture given by a professor, I was motivated to purchase this novel. The professor only read one chapter, and after hearing it, I couldn't wait to read every chapter.

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: Not bad, just ho hum
Review: All in all, this book just didn't do it for me. Wickwire's musings on life, death, religion, marriage, family, and all that stuff seem so sophomoric and flimsy--not to mention hackneyed--that I had trouble not flinging the thing across the room at various points. Not to be cruel, but the writer's views on the afterlife (for example) make Shirley MacLaine look like Gandhi. I'm genuinely happy that the writer has become a more self-realized husband and father and all that, but, frankly, I read a mountaineer's memoirs for the mountaineering, not for explicit commentary on personal stuff.

On the other hand, I did enjoy Wickwire's climbing narratives, at least a little. Wickwire will always be associated with K2--and probably vice versa; it is good to have his account of this important ascent in the first person. I wish the whole book had been about K2. While the title of the book is atrocious, it is the book's narratives of dangerous situations that keep the reader going (just as it seems to be, in part, the danger of climbing that keeps the mountaineer going). This book will certainly do for a rainy day or a long plane ride (or even a long, nasty bivouac), but it is nowhere near mountaineering lit. at its best. Look to Jon Krakauer or Joe Simpson for that

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT
Review: In an attempt to answer the universal question "Why am I here?" Jim Wickwire finds himself on the way to the highest and most remote places on Earth. In the ultimate expression of life he climbs---not simply as a way to bait death, but to use force of will combined with the utmost in physical endurance to overcome supreme challenge. The struggles he faced allowed him to use his mind and body to the maximum, completely utilizing the components necessary for life. This book takes you from Wickwire's first rock climbs in eastern Washington to his assault and conquest of K2 in expert form. Excellent pictures appear in all the right places to emphasize the story line. A vivid picture is painted of close friends gained and lost, but all remembered. While some may contend that this is merely a chronicle of mountaineering tragedies, I found it uniquely motivating, inspiring me to great levels of personal achievement. Wickwire is not able to fully explain why he did these things, but it is highly provocative to ponder the same questions in yourself. Maybe 'born to climb' is the best explanation of all for the man who's story is now told.

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Summary: An uncompromising retrospective about a climber's choices
Review: The invisible work of co-author Dorothy Bullitt is one of this book's most noteworthy (and overlooked) attributes. Ms. Bullitt worked for months with friend and colleague Jim Wickwire to fulfill their mutual pact to be unstintingly honest and uncompromising in the telling of this tale. World class climber, successful attorney, family man, and husband, perhaps in that order, Jim Wickwire, here reveals a self-critical portrait of a deeply flawed man who faces extraordinary challenges driven by inner needs he only begins to grapple with in this book. On expedition climbs at high altitude, Wickwire tests the limits of human endurance and reveals how the comfortable virtues of civilized existence dissolve with the thinning air and the immediacy of survival. You need not be a climber to appreciate the life-and-death challenges of climbs of the earth's highest peaks, miles above sea-level, where the biosphere ends and outer space begins. This page turning climber's tale works on several levels: adventure, memoir, tribute, and morality play. The subtext of this exciting book is a question left unanswered: with all of his compromises, regrets, and self-absorption, would Jim Wickwire, given the chance, have done it any differently? Men and women with whom I have shared this book respond to Jim Wickwire as both hero and cad, each gender assigning its own proportions. I found myself reacting with distaste and envy at the choices Wickwire made; my wife largely with distaste at his wife's sacrifices. Seldom will you see a man reveal himself with such unvarnished truth. The fact that Dorothy Bullitt has made herself so transparent to the character portrayed is remarkable craft. In the end, the revelation of Jim Wickwire's character, warts and all, may be either viewed as a critical turning-point for Wickwire's growth as a human being, or as one last binge of self-indulgence a la "enough of me talking about me, what do you think of me?" An engagingly quick read on one level, I found myse! lf haunted by the provocative questions lying just beneath the surface. This book will catalyze discussions between friends, book club members, and those in committed relationships. In the end, we must each ask ourselves the same questions which Jim Wickwire is beginning to ask of himself.

Rating:
Summary: Addicted to the pursuit of perfection?
Review: This book was gripping from start to finish. Surprisingly, what kept me reading was not the anxious anticipation of whether Wickwire would summit the next peak, but weather he would be able to fill the void deep inside him that drove him to engage in such a dangerous activitiy; and what enabled him to compartment his life in such a way that he could pursue mountain climbing with an apparent reckless disregard for his wife and family, even though it is clear that he loves them very much. This book definitely leaves you wanting more. Not more summits, disappointments, adventures or tragedies, but more insight into what this drive to climb mountains is really all about. Just as Jim Wickwire's appetite for summiting Everest is never satisfied, neither is the reader's appetite to understand this strange desire to stand on top of the world no matter what the cost or risk. Although I found myself resenting Wickwire for his ability to risk so much on behalf of his wife and family, I also begrudgingly admire his refreshing honesty and frankness. This alone, makes this book worth reading. The bonus is the small snap shots we get of the true hero of this book, Mary Lou Wickwire.