Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival
by Joe Simpson
List Price:
Our Price: $6.15
You Save: $8.84 (59%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Joe SimpsonBrand: Harper Collins Pub
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-02-03
ISBN: 0060730552
Number of pages: 218
Publisher: Perennial
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780060730550
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Book Reviews of Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival
Book Review: Success through Failure
Summary: 5 Stars
A Riveting, captivating, and intense story of luck, survival, and clever thought keeping the reader glued too the book until it is finished. Here are my thoughts: 1. The climb to the summit is dangerous, but the descent to the bottom is more deadly. 2. The dream of reaching the summit invokes massive adrenalin surges and intense God-like visions of grandeur. Joe and Simon got caught up in the moment of glory at the top causing them to dream of more daring feats and adventures. The day-dream was potential distractive because it detoured them from realizing they need to start focusing and preparing for the descent down. 3. Joe and Simon were equally fit and Joe envied Simon climbing skill and pose in danger. Joe and Simon both experience near fatal slides through snowy powder, collision with falling rocks, floods of small avalanche snow slides, and intense fear relating to the possibility of step into the void and falling 4,500 onto the glacier below. 4. Joe and Simon narrative include discussion of how they control strong emotional fear perceptions by returning to rationale and objective thought. Thought and belief lead to action. Action practiced and understood through years of experience climbing mountains. However, action often leads to failure, but as long as the failure was not fatal, the climbers learned and kept moving. 5. Action required life and death decisions by Simon. Simon and Jeo reach the west side of the mountain which is a safer descent down and this gives them hope they will get off the mountain. Simon sits on a seat cut out in the snow and lowers Joe and Joe then builds the next seat as Simon climbs down to the next seat; they repeat the process rapidly until Joe falls over an ice cliff hundreds of feet above the glacier bottom. Simon can't hold the weight and Simon must cut the rope holding Joe suspending in a crevice. Simon thinks he has killed Joe. Simon had to act and if Simon didn't cut the rope, he believed he too would be pulled over the ice cliff.
Success through failure is the central theme of this book. Both Joe and Simon had to act and too not act meant freezing to death on the mountain. Acting meant possible falling through the snow into the void, but the failures were usually mitigated by the equipment and safety procedures preventing fatal failure. Miscalculation seems to have been the cause of the serious judgments in error: 1. Joe admits too the lack of study about the path for descent 2. Joe removes the safety line and then the accident occurs, an accident that leaves his leg useless, pain filled, and jeopardizes his chances of survival. 3. Joe and Simon miscalculate the amount of petro they needed for the descent down. They didn't carry tents and reduce weight, but they did carry extra oxygen for the climb to the top and both Jeo and Simon's focus was on reaching the summit and not on getting back to base camp. 4. Simon could have abandon Jeo after his accident. Jeo realized any attempt to save him could mean death for both of them. Simon failure of not abandoning Jeo turned into a success, as he managed to lower Jeo over 3,000 feet, 150 feet at a time. Jeo and Simon defied odds and turn the odds in their favor giving them increased confidence to survive.
Luck favored Jeo. Jeo managed to lowered himself on a snow crust at the bottom of the crevice and navigate himself to the surface into the sunlight. The element of luck seemed to favor Jeo. Jeo reflected on the death of two Japanese climbers, whose line failed them and they fell to their deaths, as they crashed and slide down the glacier 4,500 feet below. Jeo commented how they seemed to defy the odds of failure that did not spare the Japanese climbers.
I also recommend reading "Into the Thin blue Air" and "Success through failure"
Summary of Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival
Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death.
The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave.
How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival, and a poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship.
Concise and yet packed with detail, Touching the Void, Joe Simpson's harrowing account of near-death in the Peruvian Andes, is a compact tour de force that wrestles with issues of bravery, friendship, physical endurance, the code of the mountains, and the will to live. Simpson dedicates the book to his climbing partner, Simon Yates, and to "those friends who have gone to the mountains and have not returned." What is it that compels certain individuals to willingly seek out the most inhospitable climate on earth? To risk their lives in an attempt to leave footprints where few or none have gone before? Simpson's vivid narrative of a dangerous climbing expedition will convince even the most die-hard couch potato that such pursuits fall within the realm of the sane. As the author struggles ever higher, readers learn of the mountain's awesome power, the beautiful--and sometimes deadly--sheets of blue glacial ice, and the accomplishment of a successful ascent. And then catastrophe: the second half of Touching the Void sees Simpson at his darkest moment. With a smashed, useless leg, he and his partner must struggle down a near-vertical face--and that's only the beginning of their troubles.
Biographies Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Biographies Books
Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Storyby John Feinstein
Back Bay Books; Published: 2005-05-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.75
Price in other shops:
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillmanby Jon Krakauer
Anchor; Published: 2010-07-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.70
Price in other shops:
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)by Lawrence S. Ritter
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2010-04-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.31
Price in other shops:
A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguezby Selena Roberts
Harper Perennial; Published: 2010-02-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.51
Price in other shops:
The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women's Soccer Team and How It Changed the Worldby Jere Longman
Harper Perennial; Published: 2001-04-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.75
Price in other shops:
Go For the Goal: A Champion's Guide To Winning In Soccer And Lifeby Mia Hamm, Aaron Heifetz
It Books; Published: 2000-07-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops:
This Voice in My Heart: A Runner's Memoir of Genocide, Faith, and Forgivenessby Gilbert Tuhabonye, Gary Brozek
Amistad; Published: 2007-05-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.88
Price in other shops:
Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Bigby Jose Canseco
It Books; Published: 2006-02-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops:
The Last Seasonby Eric Blehm
Harper; Published: 2006-04-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Hawk : Occupation Skateboarderby Tony; Mortimer, Sean Hawk
Regan Books; Published: 2000; Hardcover; Book
Similar Books and other products
Into the Wildby Jon Krakauer
Krakauer; Anchor; Published: 2007-08-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.74
Price in other shops:
No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaksby Ed Viesturs, David Roberts
Random; Broadway; Published: 2007-11-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Enduranceby David Howarth
Lyons Press; Published: 2007-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.01
Price in other shops:
Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survivalby Dean King
Back Bay Books; Published: 2005-04-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountainsby Jon Krakauer
Lyons Press; Published: 2009-02-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.67
Price in other shops:
Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Seaby Steven Callahan
Mariner Books; Published: 2002-10-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.21
Price in other shops:
Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Seaby Steven Callahan
Mariner Books; Published: 2002-10-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.05
Price in other shops:
Touching the VoidSony; Release date: 2004-06-15; Published: 2004-06-01; DVD
Best price: $13.24
Price in other shops:
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyageby Alfred Lansing
Basic Books; Published: 1999-03-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.64
Price in other shops:
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disasterby Jon Krakauer
Random; Anchor; Published: 1999-10-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.19
Price in other shops: