The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-la Paperback – June 26, 2001

The book The Last River I have odered came fast and in excellent condition. I was very satisfied.

Just finished "The Last River" by Todd Balf.If you are a fan of true story modern day explorations (think John Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" or "Into The Wild"), you will likely enjoy Todd Balf's narrative of the ill-fated 1998 expedition on the Tsangpo River in Tibet, one of the world's last unexplored regions.The author does a great job of introducing the mystique of the region and the mythical history of the challenging gorge. He introduces the sport of extreme whitewater kayaking and those who risk their lives to challenge nature. He interweaves the who, what, where and psychological why in a journalistic tale of adventure and tragedy.

Very well written with interesting in depth background of the region and the paddlers. The last 50 pages or so were mostly about the reaction of the pading community to the tragic death of one of the team. I lost I interest in that part

Even with our satellite photos, gps and other technical advances, nature still has the last word. I hope this river is never tamed!

Like others, I wondered at the number of people who slammed this book, which I found to be gripping, enjoyable, and in places hard to read for all the right reasons. The answer is simple: this book is not written for the armchair adventurer, for someone who will watch the Discovery Channel but never actually go to any of those places they'll see on the screen. It tells some hard truths, and I can easily understand why those who bought the book hoping to be entertained by someone else's tragedy would be greatly disappointed. If, however, you've ever been closer to real adventure than picturing yourself in an SUV ad, I have a feeling this book will work for you.It is not a fun book. No book with a tragedy at its center should be fun or light reading, really. But it is fascinating, compelling, a page-turner. It is highly educational, particularly for those who are inclined to view adventure athletes as brain-dead adrenaline junkies. By taking the reader through the expedition members' hard work and preparation, the hassles and hardships they endured, the book forces us to see them as being in many ways the antithesis of the stereotype: they are patient, painstaking, and thorough.The bottom line is that this book isn't the literary equivalent of America's Most Death-Defying Videos. It's not written to titillate the folks back home. It seeks to tell the truth about a pursuit that many people find simply incomprehensible. If read with an open mind and without an expectation of being thrilled by death-defying feats, I think it will give the reader that understanding.

"Extreme", "lantern jawed", "boulders the size of buildings". Mix these three cliches, stir in an almost incomprehensible mix of first names and some [partial] biographies and you have the essence of Todd Balf's The Last River - The Tragic Race of Shangri-La. Ostensibly the tale of a river exploration by kayak gone awry it's focus is continuously blurred by disorganized snippets of arcana and personal information about the participants and (too many) peripheral players in this tale of a grand scheme gone bad. The real tragedy of this story seems to be the fact that Balf is the self- appointed chronicler of it. Balf continuously mires the reader in minutiae that is scattered seemingly hodge-podge throughout the story. The timeline of the book wavers between serpentine and non-existent and further clouds an already confusing tale. The story itself, the story of a group of experienced paddlers seeking the ultimate challenge on one of the mightiest rivers in the far east, has unlimited potential to be engaging. Instead, Balf scrawls such a circuitous, hackneyed missive, that the weakly developed principal characters rush down a river of unpredictable, choppy and confusing prose long before they reach the river that shares those qualities. In the Author's Note Balf writes of his struggle to give shape to an original article about the topic of his book. The reader is predisposed to think that Balf underwent the same struggle with the book..and lost. Balf seems overwhelmed by the topic at hand: too much information, too much forced drama and too many characters have resulted in an unruly pastiche of a story. In the end it is the story that suffers: the clarity of the participant's vision has been lost, the essence of the experience that beckoned them left unexplored. For [the money] CAN there are more entrancing journeys for the reader to take.

Great book! Unbelievable attention to detail, I felt likeI was on the river with them. The story has a great flowand ease of readindg that makes it a joy to read from thefirst page to the last! I am looking forward to reading otherbooks by this gifted author. In my opinion Todd Balf is oneof the best authors of our time.

I enjoyed it completely.

This is an interesting book about an attempt on the Tsangpo that has a tragedy. In the introspective analysis that follows and indeed permeates the whole book an objective assessment appears to take a balanced look at decisions made and actions taken.

In the first east south east of Tibet the mighty river Tsangpo-Brahamaputra enters the trecherous gorges as it enters the Indian tropical jungle. The mighty river cuts one of the deepest and longest canyons in the world, seperated from the outer world by high snow clad mountain ranges of Easter Himalays and tropical to alpine forests. The place always attracted travellers and adventurers and considerd as the last romance of geogrpahy.The book puts a gripping narrative of the 1996 ill fated National Geographic expeditionof Kayaking the Tsangpo Gorge. It tells about the racers, the people of the Tsangpo gorges, their rituals, the flora and fauna of the region. The flavor of Tibetan beliefs of the river and effect on the racers is gripping. In the end its tragedy. Its an unfinished race and lost to the high forces of nature.