2023 Archive (3 found)
The Great Pandemic Novel
May 24, 2023 | Chicago Tribune
The pandemic is officially over. By federal declaration, the public health emergency expired on May 11, capping a general sense that has been in the air for months. Yet Covid-19’s devastating
High and Dry
April 13, 2023 | The Economist
A largely forgotten chapter of a little-remembered war between England and Spain provides the setting for this gripping study of human nature in extremis. Wager, a British frigate, crashed onto rocks off the coast of Patagonia while pursuing the enemy into the Pacific in 1741. The seas in that remote part of the world are infamous. “Below forty degrees latitude, there is no law,” went a sailors’ adage. “Below fifty degrees, there is no God.”
Stamina Pays Off
February 10, 2023 | The Wall Street Journal
One of the best adventure books ever written begins with a failure. “The order to abandon ship was given at 5 p.m.” So opens Alfred Lansing’s “Endurance” (1959), the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 attempt to sail to Antarctica and cross it on foot. The eponymous ship was trapped in ice for nine months and eventually sank after being crushed by the pack. Shackleton and his crew of 27 had to paddle, march, hunt and shiver their way to safety, braving huge seas in smaller boats with the use of crude navigational instruments. Somehow, they all survived.