I’ve been devouring books lately, everything from fiction, to narrative non-fiction, to self-help to interviews with writers. But I thought I’d plug these three recent releases, because I’ve enjoyed them all. Interestingly enough, these books all directly, or indirectly, deal with our relationship to Fear and Anxiety.

The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Survival, Success … and Love.  By Jaimal Yogis.

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This is a tremendous new book that I really enjoyed. Yogis distills all the latest neuroscience about fear and the benefits of mindfulness into a very easy-to-read, personal and enjoyable memoir/self-help/nonfiction.

I thought this book was so good, it kind of made me mad/jealous. Yogis’s prose is austere and easy, but the messages that he is able to convey through this confident writing are truly profound, practical and fascinating. Yogis casts himself as being stifled by fear—as so many of us are. He sets out to understand what causes these fears to arise, and how to overcome them in order to go on and do great things. For Yogis, this journey sees him overcome his fear of sharks and big waves and surf Mavericks, and more importantly, overcome his fears of commitment and marry his girlfriend.

For me, I was able to reflect on some of my own fears, which I didn’t even really know existed. Now, I feel empowered with a deeper understanding for how these fears have held me back. Best of all, I feel like I have a game plan for overcoming them, and the motivation to do so.

 

Death Grip: A Climber’s Escape from Benzo MadnessBy Matt Samet.

51HOP4UTsuLPenned by my good friend and writing mentor Matt Samet, this engrossing memoir deals with one of the biggest and most difficult to understand problems we face in this country: the widespread use and overprescription of psyche meds. I think most of us know at least one person on psyche meds and have seen how they can really wreak havoc on that person’s personality, life and also family/friends. Samet, as most people reading this blog will know, was once one of the country’s best rock climbers, a sport-climbing visionary and one of the ballsiest trad climbers Eldo has ever seen. Not to mention that Samet gave the climbing community some of the funniest, wittiest, but also darkest humor columns ever written. Death Grip traces Samet’s tumultuous, painful stumble from climbing/writing god to the clutches of depression and thoughts of suicide.

I share a personal connection with this story. In fact, I am featured in the first chapter and played a role in the day that Samet hit his critical nadir during his benzo-addled spell. I was there to see the harsh effects of his withdrawal, and it was one of the darkest, most difficult things I’ve ever had to deal with in my life. Still, I was surprised to read about just how far gone Samet really was during that period. This book is a very personal and gripping account that I think all climbers should read.

For me, the best part of the book was the enjoyable, highly literary prose for which Samet is so beloved and renowned. The proof that he has escaped from the proverbial and literal death grip is not just in the fact that he now happily lives with his wife, Kristin, son, Ivan and dog, Clyde … but that his writing is, once again, so lucid, fierce and powerful. Some of the descriptions and forceful language brought a smile to my face. My old friend is back.

Hardcover. List price: $25.99 

Into Action. By Greg Crouch

51A9ps7THhL._SL1024_One of my favorite climbing stories of all time is Enduring Patagonia, a book whose release date of September 11, 2001 was, sadly, overshadowed by the 9/11 tragedy. Ironically, no writer has done a better job of bridging the genres of climbing and warfare better than Greg Crouch, himself a seasoned alpinist and West Point grad. I think it’s accurate to say that there are many similar subjects that both climbing and warfare stand to explore, especially in how both can be these tremendous and dramatic catalysts for one’s coming of age (i.e., Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, maybe my favorite war story.)

Into Action is Crouch’s latest offering on Kindle readers, a “mercifully short” (Crouch’s words) stab at fiction. The title is suiting not just because the story is set during Operation Just Cause, the 1989 invasion of Panama (in which Crouch himself was an infantry platoon leader), but also because of how quickly and actively the story sucks you into the action. I was pleasantly surprised by how immediately engrossed I became in the story of Private First Class Daniel Tilley. Crouch flexes his writing muscles and strong-arms you from the ribald introduction right through to the explosive and tragic denouement.

My only critique is that the story, as quickly as it begins, ends. I wished it were longer!

Kindle, $1.99.