Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest by Beck Weathers
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Book Reviews of Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
Book Review: disappointed
Summary: 3 Stars
I was a little disappoined in this book. If you have read "Into Thin Air", you know how riveting it was, and it gave lots of details of the tragedy on Everett. Beck Weathers, in his autobiography, does not provide much more detail about what happened to him and how he survived. Worth reading, but i was looking for more.Book Review: If you're wondering what happened to Beck Weathers...
Summary: 2 Stars
If you're wondering what happened to Beck Weathers after he was rescued from Everest in 1996... keep wondering. This inappropriately titled book focuses on the climb itself and Beck's life story, with almost no details on how Beck managed to surmount the terrible injuries he suffered while climbing Everest. Details of the climb itself occupy about 1/3rd of the book; 109 of it's 335 pages. It's the same story you've already read in "Into Thin Air", "The Climb", "High Exposure", and numerous magazine articles. Beck's telling is more informal and provides less detail than those other sources. Interspersed with Beck's narrative are occasional quotes from his wife, family, friends, or other participants in the climb(e.g. Charlotte Fox and Madan K.C.). Ultimately, this portion of the book proves unsatisfying if you're read any other material concerning the 1996 climbing season on Everest. The remainder of the book covers Beck's life story: his family life, difficulties with depression, family and marriage problems, and previous climbs. Those who bought "Left for Dead" with an interest in mountain climbing will be disappointed with the rather short descriptions of Beck's previous climbs. The final chapter, say 40 pages, describes the surgeries and rehabilitation needed to recover from the injuries suffered on Everest, along with family life at the time, and the death of his wife's brother. Again, the chapter moves along quickly without much detail. While this book is somewhat entertaining, it reads like a transcription of several hours of telephone interviews with all the limitations that implies; one wonders if co-author Stephen Michaud was simply the typist who transcribed these conversations. In the end, while you may have learned a bit more about Beck Weathers and what he went through on and after Everest, he still remains largely an enigma.Book Review: A Great Magazine Article....
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a great magazine article, puffed up to a book-length work. I like Beck Weathers' sense of humor, which shines forth from time to time. And I like the idea of getting inside the psyche of the sort of man who'd leave his wife and kids for months at a time to do life-threatening and pointless things like climb deadly mountains. But Weathers isn't a very introspective man, and while he mentions several times having had an epiphany, I seem to have missed it in the actual narrative of his resurrection from the dead. One sign of Weathers' psychological distance from himself is that he refers to himself as "you." "When you freeze your hands solid on Mounth Everest, your hands feel like chunks of wood." Where is the first-person pronoun here? And oddly, that lack of self awareness seems to persist even in the post-epiphany stage.
Even though I'm a woman and a non-mountainering type, I still couldn't get interested in Beck and Peach's marital therapy or how their parents met or their pets. Skip that section entirely, is my advice.
I like the clear way Weathers explains what you actually do on a mountain--I could picture things more clearly in his descriptions than in most others I've read (and I'm kind of on a Mount Everest and Himilaya rampage at the moment.)
But essentially this book is pretty much an anti-mountain-climbing book which presents what would normally be seen as accomplishments as symptoms of psychological and moral failings. The pathology of adventure-seeking at 29,000 feet. (btw, Weathers claims that his becoming a pathologist was not related to his own pathological mental state, but the whole book belies that claim.)
Book Review: Leave It, This Books Dead
Summary: 2 Stars
Of all the people involved in the 1996 Everest expeditions, Beck Weathers should have 1 of the more interesting stories to tell. Blind, severely frostbit, and left to die (twice), Weathers stood up and basically walked down the mountain to a high altitude helicopter evacuation.This Everest story involves about a quarter of the book. It quickly becomes apparent that Weathers' greatest accomplishment in life was to almost die.
The rest of the book is about Beck and his parents, his brother, his wife, his kids, his pets, his depression, his faith, and his job...and it's pretty boring. In the end, we find that Weathers neglected his family for so long, they basically gave up on him...not caring whether he was around or not. But of course Beck is given a second chance to make everything better and now he wanders around his house telling his kids, wife, and pets how much he really loves them (at least that's the impression I got).
What I found most interesting is that Weathers at no point absolutely swears off mountain climbing (despite having lost a good part of his face and most of his hands to frostbite, not to mention the strain it put on his family).
Will Beck climb again? Will Peach divorce him and take the kids? What will happen to the family dog? I'm sure there will be a sequel and I'll tentatively call it "Back To Life" and give it 1 star. The gravy train on Everest books is coming to an end.
Book Review: Ask for a refund
Summary: 2 Stars
Beck Weathers' book starts out mildly interesting as it explores his story of the 1996 Everest diaster, and then regresses into a self absorbed examination of how intelligent and how atheletically able Beck Weathers sees himself. Weathers airs out his struggle with an affliction suffered by millions, depression, but it's hard to judge if he truly is afflicted, or if his claim of depression is just an excuse for a life of self absorbtion and selfishness. The first few chapters of the book is a cheap and not well written attempt to grab the readers attention as it thinly describes the Everest adventure, the middle of the book about the life of Weathers growing up can (and should)be skipped entirely, and the end has some intersting tales of Weathers' climbing experiences around the world. When you finish this book, you'll want two things. First, you'll want at least half of whatever money you spent on the book back, and second, you'll feel certain that Jon Krakauer is owed the other half, because Beck Wethers certainly would never have sold a single book had Krakauer not published his brilliant "Into Thin Air."