First published 2000
This collection brings together 46 firsthand accounts of humans facing nature's most violent forces. Ullman assembles voices spanning centuries, from Pliny the Younger witnessing Vesuvius erupt to a scholar dying from radiation exposure. The contributors read like a roll call of explorers and adventurers: Roald Amundsen, Ernest Hemingway, Sir Edmund Hillary, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Herodotus, Thor Heyerdahl, Charles Lindbergh, Sir Ernest Shackleton, and Orville Wright. Their testimonies capture survival against earthquakes, bubonic plague, massive fires, blizzards, tidal waves, floods, deadly insects, and waterspouts. Readers experience 45 seconds inside a tornado, the triumph of reaching the North Pole, combat with a whale, ejecting from a supersonic aircraft, and crossing 800 miles of Antarctic waters in an open boat. Each account reveals how individuals respond when confronted with forces beyond human control.
Genres: nature, survival, adventure, non-fiction
Vibes: emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: man-vs-nature
Setting: Vesuvius, North Pole, Antarctica
Period: Centuries
512 pages · Paperback · Cooper Square Press