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    The Age of Daredevils
    The Age of Daredevils
    The Age of Daredevils
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Age of Daredevils

    Written by Michael Clarkson

    Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    At the dawn of the twentieth century, a small but determined band of barrel jumpers risked their lives in one of the world’s most wondrous waterfalls. Only a few survived.

    By turns a family drama and an action-adventure story, The Age of Daredevils chronicles the lives of the men and women who devoted themselves to the extraordinary sport of jumping over Niagara Falls in a barrel—a death-defying gamble that proved a powerful temptation to a hardy few.

    Internationally known in the 1920s and ‘30s for their barrel-jumping exploits, the Hills were a father-son team of daredevils who also rescued dozens of misguided thrill seekers and accident victims who followed them into the river. The publicity surrounding the Hills’ spectacular feats ushered in tourism, making Niagara Falls the nation’s foremost honeymoon destination, but ultimately set Red Hill Jr. on a perilous path to surpass his father’s extraordinary leaps into the void.

    Like the works of Jon Krakauer and David McCullough, The Age of Daredevils explores the primal force of fear and the thirst for adventure that drive humans to the brink of death to see if they can somehow escape.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 1, 2016
    ISBN9781531837525
    The Age of Daredevils
    Author

    Michael Clarkson

    Michael Clarkson is an award-winning investigative and public-service journalist and the author of seven other nonfiction books. He is considered an authority on fear and stress, and he speaks professionally on those topics. He has appeared on many television shows as well as in the Harvey Weinstein documentary Salinger, for his rendezvous with the reclusive author. In the 1970s and ‘80s, he was a river man of some repute. Michael and his wife have two sons and two granddaughters and now live in Canada.

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    • 4/5
      An interesting, at times sad, story of the Hill family of Niagara, Ontario, Canada. Beginning with Red Hill, Senior, the Hill family involvement in life on and around the river included studying the waters, exploring the off-the-path treasures of Niagara falls, fishing bodies out of the water, running liquor across the USA/Canada border, riding barrels through rapids and whirlpools, assisting those who dared ride over the falls, and, eventually, riding over the falls themselves. As the history of the family, and those they associated with, unfolds, you find yourself amazed, rooting for them, and wondering why they did what they did.