New York Times best-selling author Michael Tougias will do a virtual book talk and slideshow via Zoom about three of his 30 books on Tuesday, Feb. 25. He will begin with “Extreme Survival: Lessons from Those Who Have Triumphed Against All Odds.”
“It will be about how the survivors got through an ordeal I could never have gotten through,” says Tougias. “It focuses on how they did it, not physically, but mentally. How did they make the right decisions under such pressure, or keep fighting? When writing this book, I realized we could all use some of these lessons about decisionmaking, survival, and resilience when faced with adversities.”
Tougias describes the book as the culmination of his career of interviewing and researching the toughest survivors. Some of the historical survivors Tougias covers include Mary Rowlandson (who was captured during King Philip’s Indian War), Captain Bligh, Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, mountain man Hugh Glass, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, World War II pilot James Whittaker, Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy Jr., USS Indianapolis survivors, and more, from alpine climbers to early explorers of the New World.
Tougias grouped the stories into 11 chapters based on the common techniques the survivors employed. For example, in the first chapter, “The Power of Little Steps,” is Ernie Hazard, who left Hyannis in late November 1980 in an offshore lobster boat. Two hundred miles out to sea, he got hit by a 90-foot rogue wave, and three of his crewmates perished. “I was wondering,” says the author, “how does anybody survive in nothing but a pair of jeans in late November, getting thrown in and out of a life raft in giant, freezing seas? He was way beyond what the Coast Guard would determine as survivability.” The chapter’s theme of little steps refers to how each survivor broke down what seemed like something overwhelming into small increments.
Another chapter, “Thinking Outside Oneself,” has stories about survivors who focused on one person who needed them. For instance, Loch Reidy told Tougias, “I did give up. [Then] I thought of the one person in my life who needed me: my 14-year-old daughter. I kept a mental picture of her in my head. That gave me the power to try and fight on for another half-hour. If it were just up to me and my life, I would rather have the pain of it all be gone.”
Tougias selected stories with twists and turns and situations most regular folks wouldn’t be able to survive. As he has written eight books of true survival stories, some people seek him out to tell their tales. Other times, he reads about someone and tracks them down. Many of the survivors completely opened up about their ordeals. “I found that was true with a lot of them,” he notes. They wanted the full story to get out.”
“The Power of Positive Fishing: A Story of Friendship and the Quest for Happiness” is a very different book, which Tougias wrote with Adam Gamble. “We’ve been fishing around Cape Cod and the Vineyard for 27 years,” says Togias. “It’s a book starting when we were both struggling with things like divorce, illness, you name it, and how helping each other on the boat led to good things.” But, he says, “It’s a funny book, too, because we made every mistake possible, including on the boat, being new boaters and fishermen.” The takeaway, he says, is not just about how they became more successful striped bass fishermen but, “also, the power of having one good friend to bounce ideas off of to get really frank answers back. That’s how we overcame many obstacles and hit our goals.”
The third book Togias will speak about is the adaptation of “Fatal Forecast” for middle school readers that is part of his “True Survival” series. Tougias loves writing for this age group. “It brings me back to when I was 12 years old. What did I want to see in a book? What didn’t I want to see? It was cutting anything out too technical and making it very fast-paced.”
Asked what compels him to write these adventure books, Tougias says, “I enjoy the research and interviewing. People say, ‘Oh, you’re prolific, you love to write.’ But the writing will always be hard. I have to force myself. Once I latch onto a story, though, I’m like a pit bull. Of course, you’ve committed to the survivors to do the best job possible, so you’re all in. You can’t let them down.”
Tougias hopes people will feel inspired by the program. “Many of the survivors told me, ‘You’re wrong; you could have done it too, if you took on this particular mindset.’ I always want people to be on the edge of their seats, but also to walk away thinking, ‘Wow, I want to see what those steps were, because I may need them for my life, or for my loved ones and what they are going through.’”
“Extreme Survival: Lessons from Those Who Have Triumphed Against All Odds” with Michael Tougias will be held via Zoom at 6 pm on Tuesday, Feb. 25. Register at bit.ly/EL_Tougias_ExtremeSurvival. For more information, contact the Edgartown library at 508-627-4221, or the Vineyard Haven library at 508-696-4211. Personalized copies of Tougias’ books can be ordered at michaeltougias.com.
