53 pages 1 hour read

Laurence Gonzales

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998

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Key Figures

Laurence Gonzales

Laurence Gonzales is a journalist and author of numerous books such as Flight 232, Lucy, One Zero Charlie, and The Chemistry of Fire. Gonzales was born in 1947 in Missouri to Anna Marie Mosher and Frederico Gonzales, an American military pilot who was shot down over Germany during World War II. Learning about his father’s experiences during the war piqued the author’s interest in aviation and survival. He eventually trained as a pilot himself and flew a variety of planes. The author is also an avid mountaineer, motorcyclist, and outdoorsman. Gonzales also has a background in adventure journalism for publications such as Playboy magazine.

Gonzales’s many adventurous interests and writing background have given him a rich foundation of experience to draw on in his work. He shares stories about his time serving in the military, being lost in the mountains, and having brushes with death while motorcycling and traveling. These experiences also connected him to experts in many fields, such as pilot instructors, wilderness survival crews, firefighters, lifeguards, and more. Gonzales’s personal investment in the topic leads to emotive prose and impassioned warnings that both exult and premonish experiences in nature. This push and pull of fear and excitement seem to exist within the author and all successful survivors, which gives the book a core of blurred text
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