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Último Aliento: Historias Acerca del Limite de la Resistencia Humana
En una cautivante mezcla de aventura y ciencia, el veterano escritor de viajes y deportes al aire libre Peter Stark pone una vez más en acto el drama de lo que ocurre en el interior de nuestro cuerpo, nuestra mente y nuestra alma en los precarios últimos momentos de la vida, cuando nos empujamos a nosotros mismos al límite absoluto de la resistencia humana. Combinando la descarga de adrenalina de los deportes extremos con los sorprendentes hechos de la realidad fisiológica, Stark cuenta en una serie de historias de aventuras al aire libre, en las que la emoción puede cruzar la línea del peligro mortal. Cada muerte o roce dela muerte en a la vez una historia de suspenso, una advertencia y un thriller médico. ¿Sobrevivirán o morirán? Stark describe con inolvidable detalle lo que ocurre exactamente en la mente de un esquiador de fondo mientras su temperatura cae a plomo. Nos sitúa dentro del cuerpo de un navegante de kayaks, definitivamente perdido. Describe la fisiología de un esquiador de snowboard que intenta frenéticamente no entrar en pánico mientras se consume el pequeño bolsón de aire que rodea su cara, sepultado bajo toneladas de nieve. Éstas son algunas de las situaciones extremas que Stark transforma en inquietantes relatos de cómo nuestro cuerpo reacciona ante el trauma, cómo los reflejos y el instinto nos impulsan a luchar, y cómo, porqué y cuando abandonamos nuestro impulso de vivir.
335 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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1215 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
March 19, 2015
As I sit reading “Last Breath,” Peter Stark’s engrossing study of life’s last moments during venturesome activities, a sudden thought occurs. I’ve done several of the activities he writes about, and experienced some of the physiological hardships he discusses. Not to the extremes he portrays, of course, but I’ve been cold, thirsty, overheated, and even nearly drowned. I can appreciate that had any of my hardships progressed to the levels of his discussions, I wouldn’t be here right now. That’s sobering.
For this book Stark has conducted immense research and interviewed a vast array of medical specialists. He has plumbed the depths of normally recalcitrant research labs, reticent scientists, wilderness conference attendees, and adventurers from many disciplines. With the information he has gathered he dissects hypothermia, drowning, mountain sickness, burial by avalanche, scurvy, heatstroke, falls, predators, the bends, malaria, and dehydration. To top it off, he includes an essay on his own fear of death.
It’s a thought-provoking book that conjures up intense personal feelings about one’s mortality and willingness to take chances. It illuminates moments of foolishness and bravery, although the bravery most always leads to poor decisions. Stark knows how to make each experience resonate within the reader like a fire bell. In my case, introspection leads to disturbing thoughts of the way things could have been had my comfort zone been larger.
The author uses a highly effective technique of creating a story leading to each mishap. He weaves wonderful tales of seemingly innocuous circumstances leading to decisions that illustrate how judgment can bring death to careless adventurers. A Jeep stuck in the snow prompts the driver to attempt to walk to his destination, a warm and cheery mountain cabin filled with friends. A kayaker bites off more river than he can swallow. A hot dogging snow boarder creates an avalanche that traps him in its cold embrace. A rock climber falls, is seemingly saved by a ledge, but then succumbs in a lonely place from injuries caused by his sudden stop. A cyclist attempts to blow away her competition by a sprint that ends up with a fatal heatstroke.
Every end result benefits from Stark’s careful explanation of the physical possibilities that exist, the actual damage incurred in each scenario, and what the stricken person’s mind envisions as trauma overtakes him or her. The chattering thought process will carry over to the reader, bringing dismay and a bit of self-study. I sucked on an orange the entire time I was reading the chapter on scurvy.
August 25, 2012
What a strange book. It was compulsively readable, and yet it wasn't quite nonfiction. The author created scenarios with fictional characters to illustrate some of the most harrowing kinds of death--heatstroke, dehydration, avalanche, hypothermia, et cetera. The mix of history, physiology, and narrative was wonderful, but I found myself wondering if he couldn't have told the stories of real people who suffered from these misfortunes and survived, or those who died but left behind witnesses. He certainly had a large number of sources he could have tapped--many of whom, he says, suffered these experiences themselves. He writes a good yarn. Fun book.
November 16, 2024
“More than many forms of death, drowning retains a literary quality, as if the act of submersion itself connotes surrender, submission to something greater, or, among the despairing, the abandoning of all hope” (34).
“The French, those great colonizers of the Sahara, have a term for the way in which the dessert transforms a person: baptême de la solitude—‘baptism of solitude.’ ‘It is a unique sensation,’ writes Paul Bowles about standing alone in the dessert night, ‘and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory, Here, in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. A strange, and by no means pleasant process of reintegration begins inside you, and [you] have the choice of fighting against it and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came’” (256).
“The French, those great colonizers of the Sahara, have a term for the way in which the dessert transforms a person: baptême de la solitude—‘baptism of solitude.’ ‘It is a unique sensation,’ writes Paul Bowles about standing alone in the dessert night, ‘and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory, Here, in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. A strange, and by no means pleasant process of reintegration begins inside you, and [you] have the choice of fighting against it and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came’” (256).
July 16, 2024
I really liked the parts here in detail about human physiological response to such life threatening conditions as extreme c0ld, drowning, high falls (miles even), etc. This includes death by crucifixion, including the upright, low blood pressure conditions that can cause an apparent revival of a corpse which some see as a more prosaic explanation of The Crucifixion. Aside from that I feel Stark over0-novelizes in this book, drawing out the stories by painting an injured rock climber as an over-confident finance move and shaker and an exploration of a jellyfish attach drowned in an imagined internal discussion on the merits of going forth with a marriage
June 8, 2011
This is a truly strange book. Neither fish nor fowl, it follows the journalistic tradition of In Cold Blood to relate a fictional story hung on a skeleton of nonfiction. Last Breath gave me a strange sense of dissonance as I turned its pages.
Each chapter explores the way our fragile human bodies fail before the awesome power of nature: drowning while white water kayaking, cooking internally while bike racing in high humidity, choking on lungs full of blood while suffering the bends. In each chapter, the author creates characters—who often do not have names—to illustrate the sometimes complicated medical stages the body shuffles through on its way off this mortal coil. Some of the stories struck a nerve, like the woman who dies on the first female team to climb a mountain in the Himalayas. Her death was narrated in the third-person, observed by her fictional teammates. Something about their rituals for saying goodbye hit me hard, despite my knowledge that this was not a “real” person being mourned. Even the mourners were made up. Every time I began to consider it, the flashy trappings of the telling distracted me from the information being conveyed: How We Die swamped by fiction.
As the book progressed, I found myself paying as much attention to how the stories were told (from the dying person’s point of view or from the outside?) as I worked to understand and absorb the medical terminology. I became fascinated by the author laboring behind the stories. How did Stark decide who survived their injuries? Did he take satisfaction in letting the corporate raider die on the mountain ledge after he foolishly attempted a solo 5.9 climb? Did the woman survive the jellyfish attack in Australia? Her story is not told from inside her haze of pain, but rather from the point of view of her stodgy husband. The tale seemed to end before she did. Why doesn’t Stark convey the fever dreams of the man dying of malaria, rather than focusing on his blood counts? Why does the chapter on scurvy cover the start of the dot-com sailor’s journey rather than after he shows symptoms of his diet of red wine and potato chips?
And yet: the information being conveyed was fascinating. Stark excels in the stories where it’s clear he’s experienced some of the symptoms of onrushing death himself: high altitude physical sensations, the feel of extreme cold inside your nose, the way an athlete pushes himself to continue. Stark’s dire warnings and the love for nature in which they’re wrapped made compelling reading for me.
I’m a timid traveler. As much as I love the outside world, I don’t put myself in dangerous situations on mountaintops or beneath the waves. It would be easy to read Last Breath as a warning to stay in your home. However, Stark’s initial chapter, about a man who nearly freezes to death while skiing at night after being repeatedly warned about the extreme cold, was written for Outside magazine. Stark says in his introduction that he intended the book to serve as an Ars Moriendo, a guide on how to face our impending doom. Beneath that aim is the subtle repetitive message to study the conditions in which you are going to be outside, to listen to your body when it feels strained, to pay attention to your equipment, and avoid doing anything stupid. In that vein, Last Breath is not so much a treatise on the Art of Dying but a primer on How to Live.
Morbid Curiosity #6 published this review originally.
Each chapter explores the way our fragile human bodies fail before the awesome power of nature: drowning while white water kayaking, cooking internally while bike racing in high humidity, choking on lungs full of blood while suffering the bends. In each chapter, the author creates characters—who often do not have names—to illustrate the sometimes complicated medical stages the body shuffles through on its way off this mortal coil. Some of the stories struck a nerve, like the woman who dies on the first female team to climb a mountain in the Himalayas. Her death was narrated in the third-person, observed by her fictional teammates. Something about their rituals for saying goodbye hit me hard, despite my knowledge that this was not a “real” person being mourned. Even the mourners were made up. Every time I began to consider it, the flashy trappings of the telling distracted me from the information being conveyed: How We Die swamped by fiction.
As the book progressed, I found myself paying as much attention to how the stories were told (from the dying person’s point of view or from the outside?) as I worked to understand and absorb the medical terminology. I became fascinated by the author laboring behind the stories. How did Stark decide who survived their injuries? Did he take satisfaction in letting the corporate raider die on the mountain ledge after he foolishly attempted a solo 5.9 climb? Did the woman survive the jellyfish attack in Australia? Her story is not told from inside her haze of pain, but rather from the point of view of her stodgy husband. The tale seemed to end before she did. Why doesn’t Stark convey the fever dreams of the man dying of malaria, rather than focusing on his blood counts? Why does the chapter on scurvy cover the start of the dot-com sailor’s journey rather than after he shows symptoms of his diet of red wine and potato chips?
And yet: the information being conveyed was fascinating. Stark excels in the stories where it’s clear he’s experienced some of the symptoms of onrushing death himself: high altitude physical sensations, the feel of extreme cold inside your nose, the way an athlete pushes himself to continue. Stark’s dire warnings and the love for nature in which they’re wrapped made compelling reading for me.
I’m a timid traveler. As much as I love the outside world, I don’t put myself in dangerous situations on mountaintops or beneath the waves. It would be easy to read Last Breath as a warning to stay in your home. However, Stark’s initial chapter, about a man who nearly freezes to death while skiing at night after being repeatedly warned about the extreme cold, was written for Outside magazine. Stark says in his introduction that he intended the book to serve as an Ars Moriendo, a guide on how to face our impending doom. Beneath that aim is the subtle repetitive message to study the conditions in which you are going to be outside, to listen to your body when it feels strained, to pay attention to your equipment, and avoid doing anything stupid. In that vein, Last Breath is not so much a treatise on the Art of Dying but a primer on How to Live.
Morbid Curiosity #6 published this review originally.
June 8, 2021
This book was fascinating from beginning to end. I read it in my freshman year of high school for biology and I still think about it 4 years later. I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what it was called though, and I’ve spent the last three years trying to find it. It’s so fascinating to learn about the different way to die and how unforgiving nature is. I loved that it was written like a story, but then the narrator comes in and explains the science. Really cool concept
January 23, 2022
This was a really fascinating book about the limits of health under extreme situations. The book covers various outdoor calamities, like hypothermia, heatstroke, mountain sickness, drowning, falling, and dehydration as well as several other catastrophes. So interesting!
August 12, 2025
Great adventure gone awry kind of book!
March 7, 2018
This book tells stories of the limits of the human body. All of them except one is made up. Each chapter tells a different story, for example, chapter 1 would be about let us say a heatstroke. It'll get all sciency about it and go back and forth between actual facts and the story. Then chapter 2 would be about something else and have the same rhythm and so on.
I thought it was a good book because it wasn't boring. It wasn't boring because each chapter told a different story. I liked the way the information flowed, it was very smooth and easy to follow especially for someone who gets easily distracted like I tend to do a lot whenever I read. I really liked that I would learn something new in each chapter. Also, with all the imagery I could play the book in my head like a movie; it is really good when it can make me use my head. I also really liked that the stories had some humor in it though it was very subtle. Overall, Peter Starks, Last Breath was a good book and would recommend it t0 anyone who enjoys reading non-fiction and being at the edge of their seat or wherever they read.
I thought it was a good book because it wasn't boring. It wasn't boring because each chapter told a different story. I liked the way the information flowed, it was very smooth and easy to follow especially for someone who gets easily distracted like I tend to do a lot whenever I read. I really liked that I would learn something new in each chapter. Also, with all the imagery I could play the book in my head like a movie; it is really good when it can make me use my head. I also really liked that the stories had some humor in it though it was very subtle. Overall, Peter Starks, Last Breath was a good book and would recommend it t0 anyone who enjoys reading non-fiction and being at the edge of their seat or wherever they read.
January 10, 2017
The whole time I was reading this book, I had Australian Metro's "Dumb Ways to Die" jingle running through my head. It was festive.
Because honestly, who decides to visit Southeast Asia without taking any kind of anti-malarials, either as a pre-trip precaution or as ongoing prophylaxis? Who free-climbs a 5.9 while angry and focused on your dayjob? Who takes a shortcut through the woods at night during an icestorm? Who deliberately swims outside a swimming net during Australia's high-jellyfish season?
The people in this book do, that's who.
The short, illustrative vignettes create, in all but one case, memorable characters with tiny, abbreviated (but interesting) lives, around which Stark weaves a whole lot of medical science, history and geography. There's just enough detail here to keep a layperson interested, while providing an intriguing amount of backstory on the perils of scuba diving, heatstroke, hypothermia, free climbing, malaria, dehydration, drowning and a couple other outdoorsy pursuits. It helps that you know the outcome of each story so you don't get invested in the characters, but they're still remarkably detailed.
Good weird reading.
Because honestly, who decides to visit Southeast Asia without taking any kind of anti-malarials, either as a pre-trip precaution or as ongoing prophylaxis? Who free-climbs a 5.9 while angry and focused on your dayjob? Who takes a shortcut through the woods at night during an icestorm? Who deliberately swims outside a swimming net during Australia's high-jellyfish season?
The people in this book do, that's who.
The short, illustrative vignettes create, in all but one case, memorable characters with tiny, abbreviated (but interesting) lives, around which Stark weaves a whole lot of medical science, history and geography. There's just enough detail here to keep a layperson interested, while providing an intriguing amount of backstory on the perils of scuba diving, heatstroke, hypothermia, free climbing, malaria, dehydration, drowning and a couple other outdoorsy pursuits. It helps that you know the outcome of each story so you don't get invested in the characters, but they're still remarkably detailed.
Good weird reading.
April 19, 2012
Kind of strange. I liked the chapter about avalanche best, given that I live in avalanche country, but overall it was an odd read. Why did he use a fictional was of telling the story? Why not interview actual people who survived these events, or tell actual accounts of people who died? As a storytelling device, it kept me disconnected from the story. Not recommended. Read Surviving the Extremes instead.
January 2, 2015
This book of several presumably true stories is pretty heavy on the medical descriptions of the victim's body. In some of the stories, probably 75% is taken up with the body's reaction to a wound, or dehydration, or malaria. It gets old pretty quick.
January 19, 2009
This book is filled with fascinating details about drowning, being smothered in avalanches, hypothermia etc. Goes well with any Into the Wild type reading.
February 27, 2023
Es gibt viele Arten, zu sterben und Peter Stark beschreibt in seinem Buch einige davon. Ob man von einer Lawine überrascht wird, beim Tauchen zu schnell aufsteigt, sich beim Kayaking überschätzt, glaubt, beim Klettern unbesiegbar zu sein oder bei einem Wintereinbruch die falsche Entscheidung trifft. Peter Stark hat mich hautnah daran teilhaben lassen, wie der Tod eintritt oder bei manchem auch nicht eintritt.
Jedes Kapitel läuft nach dem gleichen Schema ab: der zukünftige Tote wird vorgestellt und der Weg bis zum Ende beschrieben. Gut gefallen hat mir dabei, dass nicht immer der Tote auch die Schuld trägt, denn manchmal kann man noch so gut vorbereitet sein und trotzdem geht etwas schief. Allerdings hatte ich nach einigen Kapiteln den Eindruck, als ob sich das ändern würde und mehr und mehr der Verunglückte etwas getan hat um sein Schicksal zu besiegeln und ich konnte den berühmten erhobenen Zeigefinger zwischen den Zeilen erkennen.
Es gab auch Geschichten, die ich übertrieben fand. Gerade der ehrgeizige Businessman, der es sich und seiner Umgebung immer beweisen muss und dessen Arroganz und Selbstüberschätzung auf die schlimmste Art bestraft wird oder der Segler, der direkt zu Beginn seiner Reise glaubt, an Skorbut erkrankt zu sein, waren mir zu überzeichnet. Gerade gegen Ende des Buchs kam das häufiger vor.
Peter Stark beschreibt stellenweise minutiös was dem jeweiligen Verunfallten passiert. Soweit ich es beurteilen kann, hat er das gut recherchiert und diese Sachlichkeit hat mich wieder ein wenig mit den oben erwähnten Übertreibungen versöhnt. Auf der anderen Seite will ich es vielleicht gar nicht so genau wissen, wenn ich jemals in eine der beschriebenen Situationen geraten sollte ;)
Das Buch hat vieles, was mir gefällt. Trotzdem konnte es mich nicht ganz überzeugen. Der Anfang hat mir gut gefallen, gegen Ende wurden die Geschichten immer schwächer. Da hatte ich den Eindruck, als ob alles schon erzählt war, aber ein paar Seiten mehr erwartet wurden, die dann mit nicht ganz so starken Geschichten gefüllt wurden.
Jedes Kapitel läuft nach dem gleichen Schema ab: der zukünftige Tote wird vorgestellt und der Weg bis zum Ende beschrieben. Gut gefallen hat mir dabei, dass nicht immer der Tote auch die Schuld trägt, denn manchmal kann man noch so gut vorbereitet sein und trotzdem geht etwas schief. Allerdings hatte ich nach einigen Kapiteln den Eindruck, als ob sich das ändern würde und mehr und mehr der Verunglückte etwas getan hat um sein Schicksal zu besiegeln und ich konnte den berühmten erhobenen Zeigefinger zwischen den Zeilen erkennen.
Es gab auch Geschichten, die ich übertrieben fand. Gerade der ehrgeizige Businessman, der es sich und seiner Umgebung immer beweisen muss und dessen Arroganz und Selbstüberschätzung auf die schlimmste Art bestraft wird oder der Segler, der direkt zu Beginn seiner Reise glaubt, an Skorbut erkrankt zu sein, waren mir zu überzeichnet. Gerade gegen Ende des Buchs kam das häufiger vor.
Peter Stark beschreibt stellenweise minutiös was dem jeweiligen Verunfallten passiert. Soweit ich es beurteilen kann, hat er das gut recherchiert und diese Sachlichkeit hat mich wieder ein wenig mit den oben erwähnten Übertreibungen versöhnt. Auf der anderen Seite will ich es vielleicht gar nicht so genau wissen, wenn ich jemals in eine der beschriebenen Situationen geraten sollte ;)
Das Buch hat vieles, was mir gefällt. Trotzdem konnte es mich nicht ganz überzeugen. Der Anfang hat mir gut gefallen, gegen Ende wurden die Geschichten immer schwächer. Da hatte ich den Eindruck, als ob alles schon erzählt war, aber ein paar Seiten mehr erwartet wurden, die dann mit nicht ganz so starken Geschichten gefüllt wurden.
November 4, 2022
This isn't a book I normally would have thought to read, but I got a copy when I traded books with some Aussies I met in Salzburg while backpacking around the world back in '04 and '05. That was back in the pre-kindle, pre-smartphone days, so sometimes you just had to entertain yourself with whatever was handy.
I enjoyed the book much more than I ever would have thought, and for some reason it has always stuck with me. I just bought a copy for my 14 year old daughter to read since she's fascinated by wilderness/battlefield medicine, and she's considering a career as an MD. I may read it again too!
I enjoyed the book much more than I ever would have thought, and for some reason it has always stuck with me. I just bought a copy for my 14 year old daughter to read since she's fascinated by wilderness/battlefield medicine, and she's considering a career as an MD. I may read it again too!
February 25, 2020
***3.5. This is a different kind of book. Basically, each chapter centers around a fictional character and tells the story of a different type of death or near death ( heatstroke, drowning, hypothermia etc...). The chapters are heavy on research and medical information and (unsurprisingly) light on the stories themselves. Stark does a great job of explaining the physiological stages the body experiences. Some of the stories are much more compelling than others and I wonder if those were the situations Stark himself experienced.
August 26, 2020
An enjoyable read overall. Part science, part fiction, this book was one of my "morning reads" over coffee while waking up for the day. I learned a lot about the ways in which I can die outdoors! It may seem dark, but the book was fascinating from a biological perspective. The vignettes kept my interest instead of diving into one long wilderness medicine text. Overall, the biggest takeaway was that nothing kills more men than pride. Be humble while exploring the outdoors; she's been here much longer than you.
April 13, 2022
I have to admit to feeling some disappointment when I realised what this book was - not 'real life' tales of brushes with death, but invented stories of people suffering various fatal/near fatal experiences (drowning, dehydration, the bends, etc). However, my disappointment was soon allayed as I realised what a cleverly written book this was. Full of medical explanations of the ways your body can fail when faced with particular circumstances, interwoven with (mostly) engaging stories about people undertaking risky or daredevil activities, I ended up finding it fascinating.
May 15, 2018
Last Breath is a very interesting book. It has many different angles of ways to die and how to barely escape death. From drowning to running out of Vitamin C, Peter Stark really gives you a roller coaster of emotions when you read this book. He tells you a story, then explains the science and what happened to the person in the book. Even though it consisted of short stories, it added up to the theme of, be careful. Thus I would rate this book a 8/10.
October 9, 2019
Not sure why I chose this book, when I was looking for something interesting to read.
While it is a bit on the morbid and depressing side, it does give the reader a view into those "last moments" from the point of view of those that might be watching perepherally.
I would not suggest this for anyone that is easily depressed or saddened by such things, and while slow, with nothing that makes you feel good afterward, it is an interesting read.
While it is a bit on the morbid and depressing side, it does give the reader a view into those "last moments" from the point of view of those that might be watching perepherally.
I would not suggest this for anyone that is easily depressed or saddened by such things, and while slow, with nothing that makes you feel good afterward, it is an interesting read.
December 22, 2021
Glad I grabbed this book on a passing whim from a stack of freebies. Well researched and detailed, describing the human body's breakdown in potentially life-ending scenarios. The individual people are fictional, but the medical aspects are not. He also injects a bit of commentary on WHY people end up in these dire situations: choice or mistake, for the adrenaline rush or stupidity. Excellent read; I'll look for more of Stark's work.
March 11, 2024
Best read in a long time.
I loved the weaving of storyline and suspence with knowlege and facts about the human body. Anyone who spends time outdoors doing recreational sports, travelling, or just 'living' should read it. A reference from Bill Bryson's, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, led me to this book, which funny enough, I couldn't put down. It was so well written.❤️ Now I will go back to finishing the first intended book.
I loved the weaving of storyline and suspence with knowlege and facts about the human body. Anyone who spends time outdoors doing recreational sports, travelling, or just 'living' should read it. A reference from Bill Bryson's, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, led me to this book, which funny enough, I couldn't put down. It was so well written.❤️ Now I will go back to finishing the first intended book.
August 27, 2025
This book was inconsistent but fascinating. Some of the stories - particularly in the sections on hypothermia and mountain sickness - were so well crafted that I forgot a few times I was reading fictional accounts. Other sections (the chapter on scurvy, e.g.) were a bit far fetched, which detracted from the description of the maladies. That said, the book was incredibly well researched and hard to put down. A fun read overall.
March 25, 2022
This book was a hoot and a half. Obviously not FUNNY Bc each chapter concerns death, but riveting from page to page. I’ve been telling everyone about this odd little book I’ve been reading. Idk, also kind of beautiful and calming to see death broken down to the science of it all and kind of sold as this thing that happens to us all, but sometimes a bit earlier to those who recreate outdoors.
June 10, 2022
How awesome is this book. I couldn't put it down;so many facts and so much information. I didn't like that everyone died, but its not a romance novel. I wish there were more books on different topics by this author, he explains things so beautifully and with such well-woven tales. I'd read them all.
November 18, 2022
Engrossing and fascinating.
Originally thought that all the stories were true, and was thus disappointed when I actually went back and read the introduction, which clearly says that they are fictional (though realistic) stories.
Note that it can get kind of graphic at times if that triggers you.
Altogether a good read.
Originally thought that all the stories were true, and was thus disappointed when I actually went back and read the introduction, which clearly says that they are fictional (though realistic) stories.
Note that it can get kind of graphic at times if that triggers you.
Altogether a good read.
March 3, 2024
This book is more for the medical junkie than adrenaline junkie. I felt a little lost and uninterested in the human anatomy descriptions.
I appreciated how the author created fictional people to describe the deaths rather than use real life examples. It was also funny how much back story he chose to give these “characters.”
I appreciated how the author created fictional people to describe the deaths rather than use real life examples. It was also funny how much back story he chose to give these “characters.”
October 11, 2017
Disappointed that the stories in the book were fictional. The author does a good job of describing the mental, physical, and spiritual turmoil people go through in extreme situations. Still would have liked to read real-life stories.
June 22, 2018
Kind of morbid, but interesting little stories about eleven ways to die. Explains in scientific detail how the body fails due to drowning, altitude, heat, the bends, scurvy, etc, all in fun fictional stories!
July 10, 2018
An enthralling blend of adventure and science, Last Breath re-creates in heart-stopping detail what happens to our bodies and our minds in the perilous last moments of life when an extreme adventure goes awry.
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