Over the Edge: A Regular Guy's Odyssey in Extreme Sports

In this personal narrative, former couch potato Michael Bane begins an incredible journey that takes him from the abyss to the highest, storm-swept mountains and, ultimately, changes his life forever. Bane's insights have come from participating in such high-risk sports as mountaineering and cave diving.

Everyone makes lists, but the baker's dozen of personal challenges that Michael Bane came up with to test the breaking points of body and soul are literally breathtaking. The adventures he exuberantly narrates are the extreme of the extreme, like swimming from Alcatraz Island, running through Death Valley, bicycling the Rocky Mountains, and climbing Mt. Denali. Along the route of his audacious odyssey, he meets his share of fascinating fellow extremists, one of whom describes the author as a kind of "George Plimpton from Hell," an apt depiction, to be sure, of man intent on journeying to a daringly engaging version of hell and back.