Customer Reviews

Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a fabulously-written first-person account of survival against all odds. I could not put this book down.

Superbly written, which is why the book transcends the basic story of survival. Steve Callahan's ample opportunities for introspection weren't wasted, and this makes some of the best reading. In addition, reading this book is like watching a movie where the hero seems most certainly fated to die, buy you know he won't(or "doesn't" in this case). I eventually wanted to just skip to the rescue because I couldn't bear to read of any more disappointment, disillusionment, equipment loss or failures, or physical or mental suffering. Right up there with my favorite true-life read, "Hacksaw".

This book is an excellent ocean survival story that kept me throughly entertained from start to finish. Honestly I couldn't put the book down. This book will change the way you look at your life. After you finish reading it, you won't take the simple things in life for granted anymore. If you enjoy true life adventure and survival books, then I suggest you read this one, it's excellent.

I started reading this book because I wanted a great adventure story. This is not an adventure story. This is on the edge of death pure human suffering. Callahan is a very skilled seaman and very lucky man. His story is riveting and told very well. His story is so interesting, his writing skill, though quite good, really isn't necessary to read the book cover to cover. This book has many places where you want to sit down and cry with the man. I'm really tempted to give five stars, but I really wanted more information about his readjustment when he got back to land, but it ended fairly abruptly. Still, I feel I know Callahan's Dorado fish, his raft, and his feelings pretty well. He did a great job.

This is an excellent,totally engrossing account of the author's quest to survive alone on the open seas for 76 days with a minimum of equipment and supplies. This is a real page-turner and is difficult to put down. Callahan faced his plight with a lot of courage, inventiveness and even humor. The parts dealing with him fighting off his shark companions are often quite funy. An excellent book for any fan of true-life adventures. Highly recommended

I'm an avid sailor, but I've never been out of sight of land. This memoir offers a lucid first hand glimpse of life adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, literally thousands of miles from salvation. Callahan captures the highs and lows of his 76 day ordeal in simple, sparse prose that focuses largely on his daily struggle to distill fresh water and catch fish with rapidly failing equipment in sweltering heat and choppy seas. Did I mention the periodic shark encounters? All in all, this is a gripping tale that left me feeling quite grateful for the myriad modern conveniences that we all take for granted. Somehow Callahan's daily intimacy with basic survival also left me longing for a simpler life, one with fewer proxies standing between me and my basic needs.

it's the book that made me want to learn about knots (since it saved his life on more than one occasion).
Anyways, the story is gripping and a fabulous read.

Steven Callahan write so eloquently and keeps you needing to know his next moves. Just the fact of knowing he went through this and survived is incredible. He is so intelligent and logical and it really comes across in this book.

I read this book as a teenager. It captured my imagination and I still think about Steve Callahan's story years later (I'm now in my forties). Steve Callahan was an accomplished sailor with good survival skills.
One great adventure I'm glad he made it to tell his story.

Solo survival stories are always difficult to tell and especially so, if the canvas on which they are played out is desert, be it water or land. How do you fill the pages with 76 days of essentially the same, day in and day out, no conversations, no fights, because you are the only actor on stage?

Steven Callahan, the survivor, rose to that challenge in keeping you glued to page after page by leading you every day anew through physical pain, mental anguish, hope, despair, dogged perseverance and yes, even beauty. The ordeal made him also explore his inner self, not because of some idle philosophical musings, but because through his struggle for survival, he could see the essence of life stripped of any unnecessary acoutrements and be both awed by his continued existence and by life's continuum as he experienced it. There are some fine, almost mystical, accounts about the sea creature that sustained him and were in some sense also his companions in the lonely vastness of the Atlantic.

To those who critize this book as 'repetitive', all I can say is that any struggle for survival is repetitive, no matter whether experienced as a result of an accident, such as in this tale, or by the desperately poor anywhere. If you are looking for the equivalent of a reality 'survivor' show, with phony human drama and empty entertainment before the running cameras, 'Adrift' is the wrong place to find it. This is the real thing!