Kaniut's book is an eclectic collection of such adventures as might appear in glossy magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Shooter, and other such publications whose stories usually involve a vicarious injection of testosterone into the reader. In fact, it's usually an overload of testosterone that gets the victims into their scrapes to begin with: "Gee, there's a wide, fast-flowing, silt-filled river full of boulders. Let's see if I can conquer it in my noisy, polluting, totally unnecessary jet boat!" "Oh, look! There's a huge, ancient, majestic grizzly boar. Let's see if I can kill it with my very expensive sport rifle." The one thing that ties almost all of Kaniut's victims together is their chest-pounding bravado and their insistence on being where they shouldn't when they shouldn't-but that, too, tends to be real life in Alaska, as does the religious fanaticism that a few of the victims display ad nauseam.

Don't approach this little anthology looking for universal themes, character development, artfully interwoven plots and subplots, inspiring figures of speech (except maybe hyperbole) or anything at all of a memorable nature. However, if one is in need of some great outhouse reading material or wants to kill a few hours on the airliner between Anchorage and Seattle, Kaniut's collection of survival tales is the ticket! Knowing Alaska and its denizens, I have to admit that most of these wild tales may even have happened very much as they are told-with the exception of the giant octopus. That one I'm not buying (even if it does make a great read).