When you know from the beginning of a book that a plane full of young Rugby players crash lands in the snowy Andes mountains, and yet somehow some of those boys survive for weeks and weeks - you know it's not going to be a pretty story. And it's not. It's survival at its grittiest core, what do we humans really need to stay alive? Their story is told in an incredibly straightforward, almost newspaper-story type narrative. There's no real emotion. There's no flowery speech. It's just as true of a retelling as you can get under the circumstances and if I'm going to read non-fiction, that's exactly how I like it.

What they go through on that mountain is so grueling: the terror, the fear, the frustration, the pain and hunger and the bone biting cold. And yet what's interesting is their faith throughout, their actual, real belief that they will be saved despite the deck being stacked against them. They get creative and turn the carcass of the plane into a shelter, they go on expeditions to find out where they are and look for help, they make their own blankets and sleeping bags and perform emergency medical procedures on each other. They eat everything that could possibly be eaten until there is nothing left but the bodies of their comrades that are frozen out in the snow. In order to stay alive, those are eaten too. It does make one squeamish, to read the grisly details of their meals and I keep asking myself if I could do it. Would I do whatever it took to be with my children again?

Regardless of what I would do, this story did make for some very interesting reading. I could NOT for the life of me keep all the foreign names of those boys and their parents straight, though. It drove me loco. I finally gave up and by the end I knew who maybe five of them really were, but honestly, it didn't matter that much. The author did his best.

No, this story is not for the faint of heart and sometimes, of course, people let their weaknesses get the better of them. But I found this incredible sense of triumph. Human beings are absolutely astonishing creatures and it's amazing how deep that survival instinct can burn.

I've come to the conclusion that its difficult to rate non-fiction, since I so seldom read it. The writing was alright but I never lost interest in the story. I read this for my Religious Foods class.. or "Soul Food" - which is pretty hilarious. Alive is very much about both religion and food but in a way I would never have expected.

Horrifying, tragic story. I didn’t particularly like the author’s style, it was sometimes cuttingly judgmental of some of the boys and was rarely sympathetic to their weaknesses. I especially feel sorry for the early medical students, to whom the author is needlessly harsh. The shit they had to do without completed training is more than is expected from most doctors, and they were in shock and with limited tools….give them a break, Piers. Overall the author just didn’t always seem very sympathetic to most of the boys. Otherwise, I felt the author did an okay job not being over the top sensationalist while also reporting how they did survive, and did make sure to include plenty of the religious elements the survivors felt so strongly about.

Buen libro para entender como más allá de lo que pensamos que es el límite para un ser humano todavía queda una franja excepcional a la que se llega con tesón y esperanza.

Here's what I learned from this book - always travel with the following: a compass, matches, detailed maps of any area I might possibly get lost in, an emergency blanket, warm clothes, Chapstick, and of course plenty of food and water