The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko

4.35 AVERAGE

thatsmybooklady's profile picture

thatsmybooklady's review against another edition

I waited months for this audio from the library, like 15 months. Then started listening and realized that my mind couldn’t focus on this one right now. I am bummed.

potato_potahto's review

3.75
adventurous inspiring slow-paced
A book about the grand canyon disguised as a book about a boat race. Loved it. Lots of natural history and legislative history. 

emiliais's review

2.0
Loved and hated it... It portrays the colorado river as an adversary that must be feared and overcome... but the subject of the story is fascinating.

abisko's review against another edition

4.0
Excellent, exciting story and at the same time a limited natural history lesson of the Southwest. Well written and conceived and well worth your time. Solid 4 star book!

krishl's review

5.0
adventurous informative inspiring medium-paced

emilyj22's review against another edition

5.0
adventurous informative medium-paced

danebrooks86's review

5.0
This book starts out a little slow really digging into the history of the Grand Canyon but the story ended up being very interesting, pretty awesome adventure and a whole subculture I knew nothing about... also per usual people are the worst sad to hear about spoiling of the Grand Canyon going on now! Loved the story and recommend to anyone who loves a good outdoor adventure!

nsperr92's review

3.0
The first portion of this books reads like a dry textbook. I’m all for history and geology, but these topics presented on the Grand Canyon didn’t really grab my attention.

The exciting adventure portion showed up near the end. That, I enjoyed.

jzkannel's review

4.0
This is my first book ever listening to, and I think listening to some of the names rather than being able to see them on paper might have helped keep track of some of the names, but that's largely unimportant. This was a book that told the story of an incredible 36 hours by backing up and providing as much context as humanly possible to make it into the length of a novel. Some of it, like the struggle for protection of the grand canyon itself and how it almost got turned into a reservoir, was very cool and helped provide context for the attitude of the people who were sort of the spiritual forefathers to the rafting guides. Some of the information about the specifics of how the dam works I could've done without. However, an understanding of the political context behind the significance of what Kenton Grua and those other guys did on that boat, especially right after a fatality occured on the water, was a wild and entertaining read.

aw12's review

4.75
adventurous challenging hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced