the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

seizes the spirit like a drug,and has led a few individualsinto unlikely challenges.For Mahoney, simply gettingon the water proves difficultbecause being a womanmade it nearly impossible forher to buy a boat in Egypt.Egypt being Egypt, there isalways a way and an understandingsoul to make theimpossible possible.Throughout her trials, sheruminates on adventures ofearlier Nile river travelers suchas Florence Nightingale,Gustave Flaubert, AmeilaEdwards, and the terrifyingstories of crocodiles byPaul Potous. In the end, sheachieves what so many adventurersstrive for—momentsof real happiness when allthat you worked for finallycomes together, making thewhole thing worth it.life in thevalley of deathby Alan Rabinowitz256 pp • Washington, DC: IslandPress, 2007 • ISBN-978-1-59726-129-60• $25.95 • Reviewed by Jeff StolzerREVIEWSThis engaging book documentsthe decade-longstruggle of Alan Rabinowitz,executive director of the scienceand exploration programat the Wildlife ConservationSociety, to establish theworld’s largest tiger preservedeep in the Hukawng Valleyof Myanmar. The obstaclesfacing Rabinowitz are formidable:a military dictatorshipthat is suspicious of the outsideworld, an insurgent armythat controls a sizeable portionof the Hukawng, rampantpoaching, and an influx of goldprospectors whose use ofmercury threatens to destroythe food chain. And in themidst of all this, Rabinowitzis faced with a diagnosis ofleukemia, which is probablythe greatest obstacle of all.Rabinowitz meets these challengeswith unwavering focus,determination, and passion.He manages to endear himselfand his passion for tigersto nearly everyone that heencounters. He is a man on amission and we are not reallysurprised when that missionultimately proves successful.Where the book deliverssurprises is in the chaptersthat deal with his leukemiadiagnosis, a development thatturns his world upside down.Normally a fearless fighter,Rabinowitz retreats into adark world of depression anddespair, cutting himself offfrom his work and his family.He writes about this in a mannerthat is brutally honest, andhis self-portrait is less thanflattering. The hero of Life inthe Valley of Death turns outto be human like the rest ofus, which makes his accomplishmentsin Myanmar all themore remarkable.The Terrorby Dan Simmons769 pp • New York: Little, Brownand Company, 2007 • ISBN-10:0316017442, • $25.99 • Reviewed byJohn GeigerThe doomed 1845–1848British Arctic Expedition commandedby Sir John Franklinhas inspired its own literarysubgenre, from Lord Tennysonand Margaret Atwood, toSten Nadolny, MordecaiRichler, Sheenagh Pugh, andWilliam T. Vollmann. Nowbest-selling American novelistDan Simmons has produceda haunting, masterful, andultimately poignant narrativeof the expedition. The result—drawn from the real-life minutiaeof the disaster, includingthe “poisons in the Goldnertins”—is, as was once written ofthe Franklin expedition itself, afate as terrible as the mind canconceive. Of all the terrors ofthe labyrinthine archipelagothe explorers journal