Fortunately, Jim Clash writes about his own life with the skill of a novelist. You are traveling 208 miles an hour vibrating under his helmet in a Lambourgini. You are bracing yourself against the rocky summit of Everest as the wind tries to pull you to your death.
I feel as if I've been on a hundred exotic journey's in the past few hours. Jim and I have traveled to the North Pole, the South Pole, space, the desert, the mountains, and the depths of the sea. And he really did all these things-an incredible human being who clearly understands the definition of 'living'.
Jim Clash knows that businessmen who approach their own field like it is the adventure of a lifetime are those leaders and entrepreneurs that will attain the summit of achievement.
But the adventure doesn't stop there, for Clash explores the adventure of discovery, the extremes of the mind with Edward Teller and others as he pursues that most perilous of summits-the knowledge regarded by some as frightening in itself. But Clash understands that the most dangerous summits provide the broadest vistas. As Professor Teller says in the book, 'I have never had any doubts that knowledge is good. And I never had any tendency to be afraid of knowledge.' One can feel Dr. Teller's resigned depression at being attacked for discovering dangerous knowledge, and his still visible disbelief that he was attacked for telling the truth when no one else would. 'To the Limits' clearly demonstrates that one man not doing something neither stops the information from existing, nor does it stop someone else from finding or doing it anyway, whether it be a climbing a mountain, or building a smarter or better bomb. Mr. Clash successfully showed me the meaning of being alone at the top of a mountain, and being alone in one's mind with the truth. Two perilous adventures testing the essence of our character.
'If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we could literally astound ourselves.' - Thomas Edison Jim Clash lives by these words. In every aspect of his life from business to the extremes of the North and South Pole, Jim Clash has realized the adventure life can be if we would only realize it.
This is one of the rare books that has the power to inspire.
But for all the good there is to say about the writing, I find myself uneasy about the book's prominently advertised intentions. Promoting the tie between adventure and business may enhance book sales but puncture some of the continuity of Clash's writing. On page three, Clash does a great job presenting: "Let's face it, evolution has extracted the primal excitement out of a workweek ... baby boomers who find themselves trapped ... are forced to buy excitement." Yet, in several sections Clash diverges, going many pages with little more than a passing stab at the relationship of business to adventure. While some chapters are innately tied to business, others, such as the first few, stray away from what is promised on the cover: a thread tying business and adventure. Clash may have overestimated the obviousness of the parallel between business success and adventuring success or occasionally tried to build the links into the writing as an afterthought. (This is the only issue holding it back from a 5-star rating.)
Carving out those parallels between the disciplines is difficult and in at least a few places he neglected the task.
Clash returned too often to the questions surrounding Scott's death in the first few chapters. I got the impression he was fascinated with death (aren't we all to an extent?). The Dalai Lama says that without a curiosity and respect for death, we can't have a true appreciation for life. However, in this book, he asked the question of too many interviewees and the issue became a reader distraction examining a particular event rather than an echo of the central theme of taking risk to achieve reward.
Regardless of whether the book returns often enough or in enough detail to the adventure/business theme or whether Clash overemphasizes an episode, the story telling is compelling and sophisticated. The flow is mostly logical (although heavy emphasis on mountaineering early on makes me anticipate a full book on climbing experiences) and carry the book through to its conclusion. All in all, this is a heart-pounding adventure journal - thoroughly researched and written with passion - that I would recommend with the caveat that the reader not expect a full-blown discussion of adventure's relation to business.