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In 1997, a Georgetown University physics professor set out to scale the highest peak of every continent and surf every ocean. Over the next 12 years, every escape from death brought him closer to life. ** ### Amazon.com Review **Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2012: ** When Francis Slakey committed himself to climbing the highest peak on every continent and surfing every ocean, his aspirations were purely selfish: he was after both glory (nobody had done both before) and a worthy excuse to maintain the isolation he had carefully nurtured since childhood. But as he traveled the world in the often reckless pursuit of his goals, fate--a concept that, as a physicist, he completely disavowed--seemed to intervene to chip away at the walls he'd built around himself. And when he narrowly avoids a deadly ambush at an Indonesian gold mine, he's forced to question every choice he's made. The adventure pieces of *To the Last Breath*, are first-rate and remarkable in themselves; whether he's dangling on the face of El Capitan after catastrophic equipment failure, summiting Everest solo in a blizzard, or leaping from the roof of a building into a shallow swimming pool as a troubled teenager, Slakey's prose is taut and intense, worthy of the genre's best. But additionally, Slakey has threaded an epic adventure tale with a much more personal journey, creating a single, riveting tale of self-discovery. *--Jon Foro* ### From Booklist From the moment as a teen that he jumped off a four-story apartment building into a narrow, shallow swimming pool, taking calculated risks with his body became a habit for physics professor Slakey. He was always confident that through planning he could cheat death and injury from any height. Wanting to outdo all other daredevils, he decided not only to climb the highest peak on every continent but also to surf every ocean. Scarred by his mother’s early death, he resolved to form no emotional attachments that could slow this quest or, more important, break his heart again. Vowing never to marry, buy a house, or have children, he worked just to support his globetrotting. In his lively memoir, Slakey recounts how, after a series of extraordinary experiences transformed his thinking, he began to involve himself in political causes, improve his teaching, and break all his vows. For readers who like adventure and romance. --Rick Roche