The Dangerous Book of Heroes by Conn Iggulden Read Free Book Online

Ubar in Oman, previouslybelieved to be a myth. He went on to make the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic continent on foot. He endured heat and cold and continued to demonstrate what a human being can do in extreme conditions.

    Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid
    In 2000 he was involved in a solo, unsupported attempt to walk to the North Pole. Disaster struck when his sledge fell through the ice and he suffered frostbite in his fingers trying to pull it out. He had known this danger before and found that windmilling his arms restored circulation, but on that occasion it didn’t work. His fingertips had frozen solid. The attempt had to be abandoned, and by the time he came home, the first joints of all the fingers on his left hand had died. Amputation was the only answer, but his surgeon wanted to wait for five months to allow as much skin as possible to recover. Fiennes found the pain of jarring the fingertips excruciating and decided to cut them off in his toolshed. His first attempt, with a hacksaw, was too slow and agonizing, so he used a Black & Decker fretsaw. Strangely enough, Black & Decker have yet to use this in their advertising. He also lost a toe to frostbite; it came off in the bath and he put it on the side and forgot about it until his wife found it lying there.
    In 2003, Fiennes had a heart attack and endured a double bypass operation. Months later, he wanted to raise money for the British Heart Foundation and planned a series of seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. At the time, he asked his doctors whether such activity would put too much strain on his heart. They replied that they had no idea—no one had ever tried such a thing before. In November of that year he completed all seven with his running partner, Mike Stroud.
    In 2005 he came to within a thousand feet of the peak of Everest. He tried again in 2008, at age sixty-four, but bad weather and exhaustion overcame him.
    One of the strangest things about him is that despite the similarities to other heroes in this book, Fiennes is always understated, softly spoken, and modest about his achievements. He is certainly a man driven to push himself to extraordinary lengths, to such a degree thathe becomes not so much an inspiration as a force of nature. His attitudes to trials and hardship are a pleasant antidote to some of the touchy-feely aspects of modern society. In short, he is not the sort of man to whom the “compensation culture” caters. We do need such men, if only to highlight the silliness of some of the other sort.
    Recommended
    Living Dangerously and Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Ranulph Fiennes

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton
    R ichard Francis Burton was born in Devon, England, in 1821. Victoria came to the British throne in 1837, when he was just sixteen, so he was in some ways the archetypal Victorian scholar-adventurer. In his life, he was a soldier, a spy, a tinker, a surveyor, a doctor, an explorer, a naturalist, and a superb fencer. As an under-cover agent, he was instrumental in provinces of India coming under British control, playing what Kipling called “the Great Game” with skill and ruthlessness. In recent times, Burton was one of the inspirations for Harry Flashman in the books by George MacDonald Fraser.
    Burton spoke at least twenty-five languages, some of them with such fluency that he could pass as a native, as when he disguised himself as an Afghan and traveled to see Mecca. He spent his life in search of mystic and secret truths, at one point claiming with great pride that he had broken all Ten Commandments. In that at least, he was not the classic Victorian adventurer at all. Burton always went his own way. When he was asked by a preacher how he felt when he killed a man, he replied: “Quite jolly, how about you?”
    At various points in his life, he investigated Catholicism, Tantrism, a Hindu snake cult, Jewish Kabbalah, astrology, Sikhism, and Islamic