Lost in Shangri-La: Escape from a Hidden World - A True Story [Kindle Edition]

If one did not know the facts and people in this amazing story had been validated by a serious journalist, it would seem laughably untrue. If you want a page-turner then this has got to be it. It is an incredible tale with incredble people achieving amazing things in what was, to all intents and purposes, a hidden valley populated by tribes not quite out of the stone age. A USAF plane crashes in remote New Guinea, only three survive, all injured. Their efforts to get help brings out the best in them and it the extraordinary tribes they encounter. The rescue and the way it was carried have a James Bond finale scene knocked into a cock hat. One keeps thinking did this really happen. It most certainly did.

But for the serialisation of this book on BBC Radio 4's "Book of the Week" in May 2011, I probably would never have heard about it. It is very well written, as you would expect from an author who was shortlisted for a Pullitzer Prize in journalism. Maybe a little too much technical and background detail for some tastes, but scrupulously researched and very readable. A real page-turner - you cannot help getting involved in the characters and the extraordinary events in their lives. I only have 2 minor criticisms - it would certainly benefit from having a few maps in it, and why on earth has the UK edition had all the American weights & measures & distances translated into metric? For a British reader (at least of a certain age!) this does get very annoying at times.

I think I expected this story to be more extraordinary than it actually was. Not to detract from what the people involved actually went though - my criticism is more with the presentation and marketing of the book itself than anything else. Given the blurb on the book and the snippets of critics reviews, I think I expected more of a life-and-death struggle than actually proved to be the case. The description of the tribes as 'cannibalistic', for example, which, whilst true, was only a very small part of their culture, and the tribes were not a threat to the survivors of the plane crash in the end. Or the presence of Japanese troopers on the island, who never actually made any appearance. I think someone is guilt of 'bigging up' this story, which I find lamentable, since it's a very good, very exciting story without needing to resort to exaggeration.

This book to my mind was more an issue of logistics than anything else - how to rescue the survivors and the medics and paratroopers from an inaccessible valley - than it is a story of survival in desperate circumstances. That part of the story is really over by the time the medics parachute in to the valley, and the rest is all about the rescue operation. It is still a fascinating tale, and the eventual plan, using gliders and snatchers, was incredibly daring. Not something I'd have wanted to live through! But I'm not sure that the actual event was really quite as extraordinary as the book claims. One suspects that part of the reason this event in history had been forgotten is because when you really boil it down it's not so extraordinary, not in comparison to many other such incidents.

I looked forward to reading this book,but as a previous reviewer pointed out the author tries to engage the reader by attempting to endear almost every character in the book to us.I also found his writing a bit stolid and he sort of fluffs the book out with trivial digressions on various subjects from gliders to explorers,but they don't push the book along.I'm sure there's a good book to be written about this incident ,but I'm afraid this is not it.

As I was reading this book it felt like the author was using a lot of "filler" to flesh out a pretty straight-forward story, but when I had finised the book I realized that most of the people mentioned in such detail had a particular role in this WW II adventure (with the exceptions of Earl Walter Sr. and Alexander Cann and a few others). There surely were a lot of people to keep track of, but I really was surprised to read at the very end that almost all of the paratroopers involved in the rescue were born in the US; I recalled that these young men were some sort of rag-tag group assembled and trained by Earl Walter Jr. in the Philippines. Not so, and they didn't get their due in the book.

Nevertheless as George Costanza would say, I really enjoyed the book although it was certainly one of the very, very minor situations in the War. The descriptions of the natives and their life-style were fascinating as were the misunderstandings between many of them and the Americans, and I was pleased to read the author's summations about these incidents in his lengthy and interesting Epilogue. This gave the book a meaningful sociological significance.

This would make a great Hollywood film - and is proof that fact can be stranger than fiction. Well researched with input from many participants or close relatives. Bet you don't guess the way out of the valley before it is revealed - very surprising and worth a expanded history in it's own right!

I was looking forward to reading this book but didn't finish it which is unusual for me. The story line was good - if only the author had stuck to the story. It seemed as if the actual story had not enough material to make a book and he drifted off giving details of almost everyone, not just on the flight but of almost everyone in the book, giving sometimes boring and unrelated details of their previous lives. It was most unworthy of the price paid!