Running the Amazon

by Joe Kane

Overview

The voyage began in the lunar terrain of the Peruvian Andes, where coca leaf is the only remedy against altitude sickness. It continued down rapids so fierce they could swallow a raft in a split second. It ended six months and 4,200 miles later, where the Amazon runs gently into the Atlantic. Joe Kane's personal account of the first expedition to travel the entirety of the world's longest river is a riveting adventure in the tradition of Joseph Conrad, filled with death-defying encounters: with narco-traffickers and Sendero Luminoso guerrillas and nature at its most unforgiving. Not least of all, Running the Amazon shows a polyglot group of urbanized travelers confronting their wilder selves — their fear and egotism, selflessness and courage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679729020
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/12/1990
Series:	Vintage Departures
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	604,317
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Joe Kane's "Phantom of the Movies" columns and reviews have appeared in the New York Daily News. He also publishes The Phantom of the Movies' VideoScope: The Ultimate Genre-Video Guide magazine, read by movie lovers and industry insiders alike. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

"Running the Amazon is old-fashioned travel writing, where accreditation is gained in courses of misery....Kane...has created a moving diorama, an excited sense of the earth's ceaseless variety." — The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

It was an ill-assorted multinational party of 10 men and one woman; their object was to run the 4200 miles of the Amazon, from a snowfield in the Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. Kane was the only American in the group. Of the original 11, only four, Kane among them, reached the sea, six months after the start. This is a spine-tingling adventure narrative that leaves the reader eager to learn what next will befall these hapless travelers. They encountered extremes of weather, altitude sickness, suicidal rapids, armed guerrillas; they met Indians who had never encountered white people; they camped on the grounds of a cocaine factory. Kane gives a vivid account of running the rapids--some of the members were swept into the river, barely escaping death. It was a grueling journey and a historic one--this expedition was the first to paddle the entire length of the Amazon. Photos not seen by PW. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In 1985 11 people from five countries began the 4200-mile trip down the Amazon; four finished six months later. Kane, a U.S. journalist and observer/participant, was one of the four. The first 500 miles of the trip began at 17,000 feet in the Peruvian mountains and ran through gorges deeper than the Grand Canyon and so wild that they had never been completely run. Kane writes sensitively of river dangers, environmental effects of development, Shining Path guerrillas, Inca descendants, drug traffic in Columbia, and the personal challenges and team accomplishment in doing what no one had done before. This is an adventure story, but it also is a thoughtful account of an area little known but increasingly important worldwide. Recommended for most libraries.-- Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Library Journal

YA-- From the continental divide in the Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic Ocean, Kane hauls readers along with the multi-national crew striving to be the first group to traverse the Amazon River from its snowfield source to its fog-clad drain into the Atlantic. Originally hired to document and report the expedition, Kane found himself learning to kayak in order to survive and to earn a permanent place on the troubled expedition. Plagued by freezing temperatures, flu, heat, malaria, violent storms, and an ineffectual leader, the six months on the river brought deadly white-water rapids, communist guerrillas, and thrills that only four of the original ten crew members were able to endure to the climax of the expedition. This action-packed adventure story will appeal to young adult fiction and nonfiction readers alike. --Gwen Salama, Hastings High School, Alief I.S.D., TX :

School Library Journal