| View Larger Image | Vanished!: Explorers Forever Lost | Paperbackby Evan L. Balkan (Author)
| List Price: | $9.95 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Menasha Ridge Press | | Page Count: | 148 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 28, 2007 | | Sales Rank: | 144,218th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
In the best adventures, the intrepid explorer returns home to banner headlines and a hero’s welcome…but what of the men and women who don’t return home? This collection proves their stories are just as compelling. From the disappearance in Utah of cowboy roamer Everett Ruess to the loss of billionaire explorer Michael Rockefeller in the wilds of New Guinea, the tales ring with mystery, intrigue, and excitement. Whether murdered, drowned, or eaten alive, their disappearances are likely to remain unsolved, but never forgotten. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 5 reviews)
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I wanted to like this book. But I didn't. by Douglas E. Cornelius (Boston)  2 Stars
July 01, 2009
I wanted to like this book. But I didn't.
It held out a lot of promise, offering up seven chapters, each focused on a different adventurer that vanished. The book started with Ambrose Pierce, the Civil War writer that disappeared fighting in the Mexican War. Each chapter focused on a person lost in the wild.
Unfortunately, the author never made us care about any of the people or the reasons they were lost. There was some narrative about the person and what they were doing. Then he collects some of the stories about the disappearance trying to pull the pieces together to explain the disappearance. It just never got convincing or interesting.
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Entertaining Read for Armchair Explorers by Renee Hetter (DFW)  4 Stars
June 26, 2009
The author covers eight 20th Century people who disappeared generally doing what they loved -- scowing down the Grand Canyon, going after Pancho Villa, circumnavigating the globe. Perhaps unavoidably considering the topic, there are a lot of unanswered questions and I found myself wanting more. More information, more stories, just...more.
The writing style is very conversational, with digressions here and there that add to the story. I would recommend it, but I would have liked to see it expanded as well as see photographs that the author describes in the text but are not published in the book.
As an aside, the body of one of the lost explorers, Everett Ruess, was identified a few weeks ago and his death explained, so I suppose he is no longer Lost.
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Good book by C. Bible (Santa Rosa,Ca USA) 4 Stars
May 13, 2009
I like the short stories in this book. Apparently they are all true but a lot of speculation is needed to write a book like this. We don't know what happened to most of the folkes in this book because they were lost and never heard from again.
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Fascinating read by S. Reynolds (Washington state, USA) 4 Stars
August 16, 2008
VANISHED! EXPLORERS FOREVER LOST by Evan Balkan is good. Really, REALLY good. Suspenseful, concise portraits of 9 adventurers, some famous and others more obscure, include:
Amelia Earhart
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Ambrose Bierce
Glen & Bessie Hyde
Percy Fawcett
Everett Ruess
Michael Rockefeller
Johnny Waterman
It is easy to either lionize or denigrate out-sized personalities, but Balkan is clear-eyed and compassionate. Adventurers are placed into context: how the person fit into their own era, and the impact of their disappearance on society and their families. A book revolving around tragedy might easily be dark and depressing. VANISHED! is not: Balkan leavens the subject matter with a wry turn of phrase at just the right time. He also discusses the meaning of adventure and risk, and its importance to even the most sedentary "armchair explorer".
Exhaustive research seems to have gone into this book. As a climber of 20+ years and an extensive collector of mountaineering literature, I have long been familiar with Johnny Waterman's sad saga. Balkan delineated Waterman's familial background concisely, setting into context Johnny's epic climb of Mt. Hunter in a way the non-climber could understand and appreciate. Yet, VANISHED! included details new to me. Kudos to Balkan's well-done homework, utilizing essential citations such as Glenn Randall's little-known book, Breaking Point: Challenge on Alaska's Mt. Hunter, THE AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL, and personal communications.
My only "complaint" is that VANISHED! was too short. The book is a good value, but Balkan is a gifted author and I would have enjoyed reading more. One is hoping that his next book will have "covers that are a long way apart."
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A light but enjoyable read by Tim H. (New England, USA)  3 Stars
April 21, 2008
This short but diverting read tells the stories of 8 different disappearances while exploring. The prose is somewhat inelegant and relies on colloquial expressions and the author's imaginings of possible events as much as on plain facts and scholarly vocabulary. The book's subjects -- Ambrose Bierce, Percy Fawcett, Glen & Bessie Hyde, Everett Ruess, Amelia Earhart, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Michael Rockefeller, and Johnny Waterman -- make for engaging reading. It's just a shame that it's all over so soon. Perhaps Balkan didn't feel it necessary to go too much in-depth about the circumstances of the disappearances and the details of their lives before their final journeys, but in that case I wish he had produced a lengthier tome by including some of the other missing explorers of the 19th and 20th centuries. All in all, it's a surface-deep read, but the author clearly did a fair bit of research and it will certainly be entertaining for those unfamiliar with these ill-fated individuals.
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