Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

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In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.

Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed somewhere deep in the Andes. He soon learned that many were dead or dying—among them his own mother and sister. Those who remained were stranded on a lifeless glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, with no supplies and no means of summoning help. They struggled to endure freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and then the devastating news that the search for them had been called off.

As time passed and Nando’s thoughts turned increasingly to his father, who he knew must be consumed with grief, Nando resolved that he must get home or die trying. He would challenge the Andes, even though he was certain the effort would kill him, telling himself that even if he failed he would die that much closer to his father. It was a desperate decision, but it was also his only chance. So Nando, an ordinary young man with no disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snow-capped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to find help.

Thirty years after the disaster Nando tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. Miracle in the Andes—a first person account of the crash and its aftermath—is more than a riveting tale of true-life adventure: it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews ::

Excellent Book! - Will Ramirez - Los Angeles, CA
I did not expect to enjoy this book so much. It is truly a great and inspiring story. Of course it's a bit depressing at times based on the events but overall it's a great story of survival. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in survival stories and overcoming odds. In fact, after reading this book I was inspired to read "Alive," and although I found it to be very good, this book was more readable and interesting.

Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World

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Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain's largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica's vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood.

Thistlewood's diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over slaves was predicated on the infliction of terror on the bodies and minds of slaves. Thistlewood treated his slaves cruelly even while he relied on them for his livelihood. Along with careful notes on sugar production, Thistlewood maintained detailed records of a sexual life that fully expressed the society's rampant sexual exploitation of slaves. In Burnard's hands, Thistlewood's diary reveals a great deal not only about the man and his slaves but also about the structure and enforcement of power, changing understandings of human rights and freedom, and connections among social class, race, and gender, as well as sex and sexuality, in the plantation system.

• ISBN13: 9780807855256
• Condition: New
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Customer Reviews ::

An enlightening experience - D. Njoku - Toronto, Canada
May the world be ever thankful for those who, like the author of this book, can dedicate their effort to enlightening us with such brilliant insight into a relatively small, but not insignificant, part of our past.
This is an experience, not quite removed from that revealed in "King Leopold's Ghost", from which those of us with a sense of responsibility can all benefit, and be encouraged to strive to make this world a better habitat for all of us who happen to share it.