Disappointing to find out it wasn’t about Bear, but the stories partly made up for it.
| Author: | Bear Grylls |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books, 2 June 2014. |
| ISBN: | 9780552168786 |
| Characteristics: | 416 pages, Paperback ; 24 cm. |
| Source: | |
| Date Read: | 30-April-2026 |
I picked this book expecting it was about Bear and his survival adventures. The survival stories are inspirational but annoyingly they aren’t told well, and you get very tired of the expression “true grit”.
One gets the impression Bear needed to put out a book or to make some money, and without any current tales of his own he decided to Google some survival sagas and reword them for a quick publication.
Bear should stick to what he does best, adventuring and getting it out on television, because his writing skills are somewhat sub par. You would get more enjoyment reading the Wikipedia entries, plus there are more photos.
Conclusion
It’s an okay book for the commute home. The included stories are truly amazing and inspiring, but Bear doesn’t really do them justice. Best not to buy the book, try to get it from a local library or the book shop bargain bin.
Further Reading
1936 Eiger climbing disasterIn July 1936, a team of four climbers died while attempting to ascend the north face of the Eiger mountain in Switzerland. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:31 pm |
Bill AshWilliam Franklin Ash MBE (30 November 1917 – 26 April 2014) was an American-born British writer, broadcaster and Marxist, who served as a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II.[1] He was shot down, made a prisoner of war, and was noted as an escaper. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:36 pm |
Charles Snead HoustonCharles Snead Houston was an American physician, mountaineer, high-altitude investigator, inventor, author, filmmaker, and former Peace Corps administrator. He made two important and celebrated attempts to climb the mountain K2 in the Karakoram Range. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:32 pm |
John McDouall StuartStuart led the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian mainland from south to north and return, through the centre of the continent. His experience and the care he showed for his team ensured he never lost a man, despite the harshness of the country he encountered. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:19 pm |
Nancy WakeNancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011), also known as Madame Fiocca and Nancy Fiocca, was a New Zealand-born Australian nurse and journalist who joined the French Resistance and later the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, and briefly pursued a postwar career as an intelligence officer in the Air Ministry. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:34 pm |
Steven CallahanSteven Callahan (born February 6, 1952) is an American author, naval architect, inventor, and sailor. In 1981, he survived for 76 days adrift on the Atlantic Ocean in a liferaft. Callahan recounted his ordeal in the best-selling book Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea (1986), which was on The New York Times best-seller list for more than 36 weeks. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:29 pm |
Sufferings in AfricaSufferings in Africa is an 1817 memoir by James Riley. The memoir relates how Riley and his crew were enslaved in Africa after being shipwrecked in 1815. Riley was the Captain of the American merchant ship Commerce. He led his crew through the Sahara Desert after they were shipwrecked off the coast of Western Sahara in August 1815. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:25 pm |
Thor HeyerdahlHeyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he drifted 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a primitive hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. Viewed: May 9, 2026 5:26 pm |
