A veteran journalist who is also a contributing editor at GQ, Drury displays a good tactical understanding of alpine rescue methods and convincingly relates the thoughts and motivations of the individual parajumpers. Leaping back and forth between background and anecdote, the book loses its momentum at times, especially at its beginning. However, the pace picks up in the suspenseful last 50 pages, which relate the action-packed rescue of a man dying near the highest peak in North America, Alaska's Mount Denali.

True-life adventure stories are probably more popular now than they've ever been, thanks to best-sellers like Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm. This book, written by a contributing editor for GQ magazine, deserves to take its place alongside those top-notch yarns. It's the story of a high-mountain rescue: three climbers were stranded on North America's highest peak, Mount Denali, and the U.S. Air Force's 210th Alaska Pararescue Squadron was charged with taking them off in the midst of the most adverse weather conditions imaginable.

 

In preparing this book, the author spent considerable time with the pararescue unit, and he makes us feel as though we are right there with the rescuers as they risk their own lives to save others. Drury could have glamorized the 210th, could have made them out to be capital-H heroes, could have reduced their courage and bravery to cliches. Instead, he shows us that they are real people who just happen to do an incredibly difficult job. A dramatic, can't-put-it-down real-life adventure. Hardcover, DJ, New.