True Survival

After her plane crashes, a 17-year-old girl spends 11 days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?

"Having empathy means our heart goes out to another person in joy or pain," says Dr. Judith Orloff. "But for empaths, it goes much further. We actually feel others' emotions, energy, and physical symptoms in our own bodies, without the usual defenses that most people have." The Empath's Survival Guide is an invaluable resource for empaths who want to develop coping skills in a high-stimulus world while embracing their gifts of intuition, compassion, creativity, and spiritual connection.

The “mountain men” were the hunters and trappers who fiercely strode the Rocky Mountains in the early to mid-1800s. They braved the elements in search of the skins of beavers and other wild animals, to sell or barter for goods. The lifestyle of the mountain men could be harsh, existing as they did among animals, and spending most of their days and nights living and camping out in the great unexplored wilds of the Rockies.

I have my own survival stories, and maybe this is part of the reason why all these other stories interest me so much. Everyone loves to learn about survival stories because it confirms the importance of the human spirit to live through trying and deadly situations. I’ve included 33 true-life stories in this book. The people in these stories have all illustrated the power of the human spirit to live through difficult experiences.

In 1937, the Shwartz family lived a calm life in their small village in Poland. Fifteen-year-old Rachel liked to sing and go out dancing at a local night club, while her older brother David was busy running a farm and raising a family with his wife Hinda. But all that changed when the war reached Butla. First, the Russians came and kicked them out of their house. Then, the Nazis came to cart them off. But the Shwartz family resisted. David decided that no matter what, his family would not be taken captive. Instead, he snuck his family out of their village and into Hungary.

On the morning of November 14, 1992, Annette Herfkens, a top Dutch banker, packed her luggage for a romantic getaway with her longtime fiancé, Willem. At 6:25 that morning, Annette and Willem boarded a plane out of Ho Chi Minh City, with 23 other passengers and six crew members, excited to finally have a vacation together. Six minutes before landing, flying at speed of 300 miles per hour, the plane lost altitude and crashed along a mountain ridge in the jungle of Vietnam.

Trapped inside a burning Lancaster bomber, 20,000 feet above Berlin, airman John Martin consigned himself to his fate and turned his thoughts to his fiancee back home. In a miraculous turn of events, however, the 21-year-old was thrown clear of his disintegrating airplane and found himself parachuting into the heart of Nazi Germany. He was soon to be captured and began his period as a prisoner of war.

In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive 25-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled woman - who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband - conquered the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male companions had perished.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER A heartbreaking memoir from a girl who escaped county line trafficking only to become prey to other abusers… Emily has always felt like an outsider, so when a family friend takes her under his wing she is delighted. But soon it becomes clear that his motives...

After years of physical and mental abuse, Jade thought her kindly foster mother would be the answer to her prayers. She was wrong … this is her staggering true story. ‘This must be what prison is like,’ I thought as another hour crawled by. In fact, prison would be better … at least you...

From New York Times bestselling suspense author Terri Blackstock comes the third installment in her gripping survival series, where fear, hunger, and suspicion threaten to tear a fragile community apart--and one young man's life hangs in the balance. Eight months into a worldwide blackout, the...

The astonishing true story of a boy who survived the war by hiding in the Polish forest Maxwell Smart was eleven years old when his entire family was killed before his eyes. He might have died along with them, but his mother selflessly ordered him to save himself. Alone in the forest, he dug a...

Capturing history was Jonathan Alpeyrie's job, but he never expected to become a news story himself. For a decade, the French-American photojournalist weaved in and out of over a dozen conflict zones. But, during his third assignment to Syria, Alpeyrie was betrayed by his fixer and handed over to a band of Syrian rebels. For 81 days, he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten. Over the course of his captivity, Alpeyrie kept his spirits up and strived to see, without his camera lenses, the humanity in his captors.

From three-time National Book Award finalist and Newbery Honor author Steve Sheinkin, a true story of two Jewish teenagers racing against time during the Holocaust―one in hiding in Hungary, and the other in Auschwitz, plotting escape. It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolf (Rudi) Vrba has made up...

In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five children pulled up stakes in the lower 48 and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available lay north of Fairbanks near the Arctic Circle where grizzlies outnumbered humans 20 to one. In addition to fierce winters and predatory animals, the Alaskan frontier drew the more unsavory elements of society's fringes. From the beginning, the Cobbs found themselves pitted in a life or death feud with unscrupulous neighbors who would rob from new settlers.

May, 1992. Hana is 12 years old when her older sister Atka puts her on a UN evacuation bus fleeing the besieged city of Sarajevo. Thinking they will be apart for a short time, they make a promise to each other to be brave. But as the Bosnian war escalates and months go by without contact, their promise becomes deeply significant. Hana is forced to cope as a refugee in Croatia, while Atka and their younger siblings battle for survival in a city overwhelmed by crime and destruction.

In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000-foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission.

Since the revolution-turned-civil war in Syria began in 2011, over 500,000 civilians have been killed and more than 12 million Syrians have been displaced. Rania Abouzeid, one of the foremost journalists on the topic, follows two pairs of sisters from opposite sides of the conflict to give listeners a firsthand glimpse of the turmoil and devastation this strife has wrought.

In One Last Hit, Austin Rampt lays bare a life torn apart by addiction, where the pursuit of one more high led him from a troubled childhood in Tampa to fleeing the country and living in the dangerous underbelly of the Sinaloa Cartel. With unflinching honesty, he recounts the chaos of eight rehabs, jail cells, and a shattered family, each step deeper into the abyss threatening to consume him entirely. Yet, as Austin's world burns—literally and figuratively—a flicker of hope emerges, pulling him toward a truth he never expected to find.

"Their submarine was dead, one hundred and eighty feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Somehow they survived. They were tortured and beaten. Somehow they survived. Alex Kershaw has done it again as he brings to life World War II's greatest submarine survival adventure." --James Bradley...