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311 reviews for:
The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon
Kevin Fedarko
4.35 AVERAGE
311 reviews for:
The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon
Kevin Fedarko
4.35 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
informative
tense
fast-paced
More dam engineering than I expected.
adventurous
informative
adventurous
funny
informative
medium-paced
A beautiful book of an exciting speed run through the Grand Canyon. I read it 40 years after the run, during the summer of 2023, and it brought back memories of rivers and whitewater, of spillways and dams. Kenton Grua’s daring river run, matched with the bureaucratic efforts to protect Glen Canyon dam during a high water year, makes for a compelling, propulsive read.
This book was amazingly well done. I think Fedarko is the best non-fiction writer I've ever read. His prose is absolutely beautiful. It's evocative and rich, drawing pictures in the reader's mind similar to the work of the best fiction writers. I laughed and cried while reading this book and I was never bored. I will pick up any book this man writes in the future.
SO GOOD. I really liked how he included so many sides of the story and all of the background information.
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This is one of those adventure books that talk about so much that is basically irrelevant to what the book is actually about. Like why am I listening to someone passing a colorblind test to become a pilot in WW2 and not the Grand Canyon?
This is basically required reading for every river dirtbag and for every dirtbag about to enter into that open-air cathedral.
If you were just interested in the speed run itself, this book might be a bit frustrating -- it takes quite a bit to get to the run itself, even to get to the predecessor runs, and in the mean time you have a lot of information about the early environmental movement and John Wesley Powell and the Bureau of Reclamation and Litton and his dories. Then once you get to the speed run itself it felt like it was just a bit glossed over; the whole drama at Glen Canyon Dam and its teetering on the brink of disaster felt like it was paid just as much, if not more attention. Which again, if that interests you (and it actually does interest me to an extent) that might be great but if all you wanted out of this book was a rip-roaring river ride, you might not enjoy this.