Pecked to Death by Ducks

by Tim Cahill

Overview

In his latest tour of the earth's remote, exotic, and dismal places, the author of Road Fever and A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg sleeps with a grizzly bear, witnesses demonic possession in Bali, and survives a run-in with something called the Throne of Doom in Guatemala. Vivid and outrageously funny.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307778413
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/09/2011
Series:	Vintage Departures
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Tim Cahill is the author of nine books, including A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, and Pass the Butterworms. He is an editor at large for Outside magazine, and his work appears in National Geographic Adventure, The New York Times Book Review, and other national publications. He lives in Montana.

Editorial Reviews

This hodgepodge of travel pieces tells of Cahill's experiences diving with sharks, jumping out of planes, trekking through jungles and other dangerous and exotic adventures. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This is not, strictly speaking, a travel book but a collection of articles, most of them previously published in various magazines, on a variety of subjects. The author places the articles into five categories: The Unnatural World, Tooth and Claw, The Natural World, Other People's Lives, and Risk. Cahill, author of Jaguars Ripped My Flesh ( LJ 10/1/87) and A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg ( LJ 2/15/89), has traveled around the world on assignment, covering a wide range of unusual events such as firewalking, caving, etc. He writes with a keen sense of humor, but with a serious and informed attitude. The reader won't find tips on hotels, food, or transportation but a rich and varied tour of interesting and unusual places and events. Recommended for all travel collections.-- George M. Jenks, Bucknell Univ., Lewisburg, Pa.

Library Journal

Cahill, author of the high-energy, funny "Jaguars Ripped My Flesh" (1987) and "Road Fever" , divides his new travel book into sections dealing with such large subjects as animals, nature's grandeur, and risky adventures. His moods range from flippant to philosophical. There's nothing funny about "Kuwait Is Burning," for instance, as Cahill muddles about in the smoke and chaos immediately following Iraq's defeat. But the piece set on his ranch in Montana, "A Dismal Lack of Mutilations," is a sweet spoof of UFOs, religious lunacy, and the dead-serious rantings of psychics. Cahill's front-line "green" report of attempts on the island of Tonga to preserve and cultivate the giant clam mix both humor, in a discussion of the clam's ambivalent sexuality, and fine reporting, in an insightful analysis of the island's politics. But Cahill's best piece concerns Lechuguilla, a New Mexico cave discovered in 1986. Lechuguilla seems not to belong on this earth, since it was formed not by acids passing through limestone but because of the actions of boiling sulfuric acid. So, as Cahill rappels down hundreds of feet to reach the cave, and crawls amid tall blocks of gypsum, and wanders through rooms of dangling, confetti-like rock formations, and wades pools beside eerie crystals, the reader briefly enters not just an exotic, but another world. This is an absorbing, consciousness-expanding book.

John Mort