Book review: "Testosterone Planet: True Stories from a Man's World"

"Testosterone Planet" is a mixed bag of 25 stories of adventure, danger and risk. As you might expect with a compilation, it contains both hits and misses. Some of the stories are excerpted from elsewhere, so you may have read them before.

I found these stories the strongest:

"Crevasse" – An engaging story of survival on Mt. McKinley by Jim Wickwire.

"Devil's Thumb" – Jon Krakauer's story of facing his personal demons on a solo climb.

"Trail Mix" – A funny hiking story from Bill Bryson (but I'd read it in "A Walk in the Woods").

"Turn the Tables" – Richard Sterling tells about the fun he had thwarting pickpockets in Vietnam.

"Abyss" – A solid account of a groundbreaking caving expedition, by Craig Vetter.

"Kharkov and the Lubyanka" – A grim, but interesting, story of a political prisoner's treatment under Stalin. Excerpted from "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz.

Some of the other stories are quite short and can be fine for a quick diversion since they don't require a huge commitment.

Some stories are too long, or just plain uninteresting. These fall into the flat-waste-of-time category: Paul William Roberts' "No Like A-feesh?," Tim Ward's "Fire Beneath the Skin," Eddy L. Harris' "On the Road" and Sebastian Junger's "The Lure of Danger."