The Adventurist: My Life in Dangerous Places Paperback - 2001

Summary

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From the jacket flap

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.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Media reviews

"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.


From the Hardcover edition.