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The Hard Way

Stories of Danger, Survival, and the Soul of Adventure

About The Book

Adventure writer Mark Jenkins has journeyed around the world, crossing wild country, probing the hinterlands, getting arrested over a dozen times. He has made a life out of doing things the hard way.
The result is a book that dives headfirst into adventure and experience. Jenkins transports the reader with him as he climbs the ice-encrusted Italian Ridge of the Matterhorn, sea kayaks from battlefield to battlefield along the Turkish coast of Gallipoli, sneaks across Tibet to reach Buddhism's holiest lake, descends unexplored canyons in Australia, and traverses the war-torn Simen Mountains of northern Ethiopia.
If you've ever dreamed of escaping, lighting out for the unknown, read this book. In a world increasingly vicarious and secondhand, we all long to make decisions that matter, decisions of consequence. This is precisely what the outdoor life still requires. The Hard Way is a book about doing, not watching -- about leaping before you look.

About The Author

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Mark Jenkins is a journalist and the author of several health books, including the Sports Medicine Bible, and is a consultant to the Harvard Medical School system.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 1, 2003)
  • Length: 240 pages
  • ISBN13: 9780743249416

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Raves and Reviews

Los Angeles Times Beautifully crafted stories...brought to life by a poetic and muscular style...Jenkins...traverses the most remote and literally forbidden parts of the globe, at the risk -- and cost -- of illness, injury, and frequent incarceration. But the lure is irresistible.

Sports Illustrated These rich, well-rendered stories succeed because as Jenkins paddles against the current or rappels through a storm, his writer's eye is working all the while.

San Francisco Chronicle From a quest for a tabooed sacred lake in Tibet...to even more quixotic pursuits like examining the American hitchhiking experience in modern times...These diverse exploits are united through a tone set by the author's lucid, creative, and economical prose. Jenkins provides clear insight into the physical, mental, and emotional conditions that should infuse bold ventures.

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