The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life » (Unabridged)

Award-winning journalist Ben Sherwood is a former broadcast producer for NBC Nightly News and executive producer of Good Morning, America. In addition, he is a bestselling author whose novel The Man Who Ate the 747 was published in 13 languages. He lives with his wife and son in Los Angeles.

We are a nation battered every day by stories about horrific calamities, tragic events, frightening statistics. Inevitably our thoughts turn personal and we wonder if we have what it takes to get through the worst thrown our way. While there are plenty of books about coping with adversity, it isn't until now, with WHO SURVIVES, that we discover the human factors that determine survival. It's a combination instruction audiobook and security blanket that blends compelling true stories with cutting-edge science to deliver some of the most important lessons we'll ever need to learn.

The book will:
—list the most important traits necessary for survival (Fear is #1.)
—identify the 5 types of survivors
—debunk myths (like only the strong survive), explore the frontiers of survival science (How much strain and punishment can a human body endure?), and introduce readers to counterintuitive thinking (Ever heard of posttraumatic growth?)
—provide a Survivors Tool Kit, including an online test that measures one's Survivor's Quotient

Each one of us eventually joins the club of millions who face life's inescapable tribulations and tragedies. WHO SURVIVES is the companion we need to prepare us for and guide us through the worst.

Publishers Weekly

Sherwood (The Man Who Ate the 747), a writer for the L.A. Times, travels worldwide to gain insight from people who have survived a slew of near fatal phenomena ranging from a mountain lion attack to a Holocaust concentration camp, and interviewing an array of experts to understand the psychology, genetics and jumble of other little things that determines whether we live or die. Readers curious about their own "survivor profile" can take an Internet test, which is explained in the book's later pages. Sherwood's assertion that survival is "a way of perceiving the world around you" is enlightening, as are some of the facts he uncovers: you have 90 seconds to leave a plane crash before the cabin temperature becomes unbearable; luck has more to do with personal perspective than chance. But Sherwood's balance of self-help, scientific theories and first-rate reporting is diminished by occasionally overwrought prose as well as the countless survivors' stories, which can run together in a touchy-feely stream of faith and optimism. (Jan.)

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