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    Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance
    Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance
    Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance
    Audiobook13 hours

    Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance

    Written by Kenneth Kamler, MD

    Narrated by P.J. Ochlan

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Physiological constraints confine our bodies to less than one-fifth of the earth's surface. Beyond that fraction lie the extremes. What happens when we go to them?

    Dr. Kenneth Kamler has spent years observing exactly what happens. A vice president of the legendary Explorers Club, he has climbed, dived, sledded, floated, and trekked through some of the most treacherous and remote regions in the world. A consultant for NASA, Yale University, and the National Geographic Society, he has explored undersea caves, crossed the frozen Antarctic wastelands, and stitched a boy's hand back together while kneeling in knee-deep Amazonian mud. He was the only doctor on Everest during the tragic expedition documented in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and helped treat its survivors. Kamler has devoted his life to investigating how our bodies respond to "environmental insults"-a nice way of saying the things that can kill us-and watched while some succumbed to them and others, sometimes miraculously, overcome them.

    Words like "extreme" and "survival" have lost some of their value from overuse and media hype. By showing us what happens when life itself is at stake, and the body's capacities put to their greatest test, this book reminds us what they truly mean.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 28, 2017
    ISBN9781541489431
    Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance

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    Reviews for Surviving the Extremes

    4/5

    42 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book is fascinating, but a little uneven--it goes from being very engaging to pretty dry and back again throughout. If you're interested in adventure writing, medicine or science, I recommend this--just know it drags a bit in places.
    • 3/5
      Dr. Kamler has climbed Everest and explored the Amazon. He uses his own experiences to explain how the human body interacts with its environment. He details the bends, seasickness, hypothermia, a truly disturbing array of jungle organisms, and even what happens to humans in space. His writing style is pedestrian, but his material is fantastic. Read this if you're unsure whether you could survive two months at sea with nothing but a life raft, or two days in the desert without water.
    • 4/5
      This was a fascinating book! I knew I would like it when I bought it for my ‘human variation’ class a few months ago. I didn’t know it until just two minutes ago but Ken talks about a tragedy on Everest in this book which is actually what the book ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer is about, a book I have wanted to read for a while. But really, what I loved about this book was the knowledge available here. There are tons of facts here about what your body goes through molecularly and macro-ly when under extreme whether that extreme pressure, not enough pressure, searing temperatures, searing cold temperatures, etc. There’s some very handy advice prevalent throughout the book. There’s stories of tragedies and miracles. And Ken is a pretty good writer as well. The only quirk I noticed that stuck with me is that the first chapter on the Amazonian jungle felt more like a memoir while the rest felt like what I had expected – humans surviving in extremes. There was too much narrating his own experience in the jungle. But that was the only chapter that I thought it was too much. The book is highly readable in my opinion. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the human body, the human will to survive, and/or the world’s extreme environments. I feel this book can offer a lot to a lot of different people.
    • 4/5
      The most interesting parts of this book are when Dr. Kamler recounts his own experiences with survival at the limits of human endurance and the physiological conditions that such situations induce in the human body. Kamler's writing is clear and his explanations of how the human body works are interesting. He addresses various extreme conditions, introducing them with stories of individuals who did (and sometimes did not) survive them, following with an analysis of how the body responds and what characteristics contribute to survival.Rock and mountain climbers call stories of disasters "epics" and if you like epics, this book is worth adding to your library. Even if you're not a fan of climbing, sailing, desert survival or trips to Mars, this book is worth reading for the interesting stories of human endurance and the explanations of how the human body works.