The Adventurist: A Life In Dangerous Places - Hardcover

Pelton, Robert Young

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385495676 ISBN 13: 9780385495677

Publisher: Doubleday, 2000

Synopsis

The Adventurist is one man's story, a story that will change the way you think about travel, survival, where you have been, and where you are going.

Enter the world of Robert Young Pelton (if you dare), adventurer extraordinaire, author of Come Back Alive and The World's Most Dangerous Places (required reading at the CIA), and host of his TV series, Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places.

A breakneck autobiography, The Adventurist blasts across six continents and spans four decades of hard-core living with its dispatches of mayhem, adventure in exotic locales, survival against formidable odds, memories of the pivotal events, and memorable portraits of the people that have shaped Pelton's obsessive spirit.

Be shelled with the Talibs on the front lines of Afghanistan; hang out with hit men and rebels in the Philippines; survive a plane crash in Borneo; narrowly escape a terrorist bombing in Africa; dance with headhunters in Sarawak; crew with pirates in the Sulu Sea; explore the events that led Pelton to his unusual calling (including how he honed his survival skills at "the toughest boys' school in North America"); and, perhaps most important, discover Pelton's secret mission--to understand the hearts and minds of the people he meets.

The Adventurist is a real book about the real world, an inspirational read that takes you places you might never willingly go.

About this title

Review:

Readers for whom the word travel ordinarily conjures images of white-sand beaches or Tuscan hill towns might wonder what person of above-average intelligence leaves home in hopes of face-to-face contact with Afghan rebels, Malaysian pirates, warlords, headhunters, or terrorists. That person, apparently, is Robert Young Pelton. Among adventure enthusiasts, Pelton is probably best known for The World's Most Dangerous Places, his utterly unique, tough-guy's guide to where not to travel, and a similarly named series on the Discovery Channel. Part travelogue, part memoir, The Adventurist is Pelton's attempt to explain what some would call his lifelong death wish, but that the author describes as "an expedition of discovery, a dangerous one with no scripted endings."

The Adventurist juxtaposes scenes and reminiscences of Pelton's youth and young adulthood with stories of his latter-day adventures in the jungles, waterways, and deserts of some of the planet's most perilous locales. "It's in vogue now to blame things on your parents or society. I don't blame anybody for anything," Pelton explains, but considering his descriptions of his abusive parents and his harrowing stint at "the toughest boys' school in North America," it is difficult not to draw connections between the privations of Pelton's youth and his obsessive need to confront danger--and the people who survive it--in order to feel alive.

Although at times Pelton's prose style is about as subtle as the firing end of an AK-47 ("It was time to live like the wind and then to die like thunder"), The Adventurist delivers on its "invitation to you to join me on the wire. To take that first step, look forward, fight your fears..." It offers views of places and experiences that most readers would otherwise never know, with the careful reminder that, "like home, adventure is not places so much as people." --Svenja Soldovieri

From the Back Cover:

"Walking laboriously through minefields to the Taliban's forward line, I pause to catch my breath. The impact of former shells on the gray ground has created white, round scars. But violence is not the strongest impression. Here in the thin mountain air, the world seems tired. Wispy clouds float against a light blue sky. Worn, goat-pocked mountains echo not with bleating but with the deeper thunder of explosions. The Talibs' most forward position is a ridge littered with large shell casings, unexploded rockets, dug-up anti-tank mines, and thousands of 12.7 mm machine gun shells. Around me is an assortment of heavy and light weapons and I am cautioned not to stand up for too long or step off the path. 'Mines...Snipers' the young, black-turbaned mullah reminds me in sparse English. Overhead I can hear bullets whizzing and whistling, short twirps and whines of sound. It's hard to explain how blasé you get about bullets, like flies that can kill you."
--From The Adventurist

So begins the autobiography of the man dubbed "Dangerman" (Toronto Globe and Mail); "tourist with an attitude" (Outside magazine); and "the patron saint of adventure travelers" (ZineZone.com). But The Adventurist is more than a book about eluding death, it's a book about challenging life--the defining book for the adventure generation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0385495676
• ISBN 13: 9780385495677
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240