The Age of Daredevils, Michael Clarkson
The Age of Daredevils, Michael Clarkson
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The Age of Daredevils

Author: Michael Clarkson

Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner

Unabridged: 9 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 10/01/2016

Synopsis

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.

About 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by SundayAtDusk on September 16, 2016

While the topic of this book was compelling, the story itself was written in an old-fashioned way--all sorts of made up dialogue and thoughts, constant comments about what individuals looked like, a dramatic start with a daredevil act that wasn't actually described until much later in the story. Unf......more

Goodreads review by Whistler's on May 12, 2025

I was middle-aged when I saw Niagara Falls and expected to be underwhelmed. I'd seen a million pictures and films of it. Water falling over rocks. Big deal. When I caught my first glimpse of the Falls themselves, I was as awe-struck as everyone who sees it. Reduced to a shadow of its former majesty......more

Goodreads review by Monte on November 29, 2016

I don't know what to call Michael Clarkson's painstakingly researched The Age of Daredevils. It's formally historical. It's certainly popularly historical because I loved it. It may actually be an historical novel because, while based on the truth, certainly conversations are realistically imagined......more

Goodreads review by Michael on November 03, 2016

The Lives and Times of Daredevils Michael Clarkson's book about the daredevils of Niagara Falls is thoroughly researched and well written. A self-professed river rat and former newspaper reporter, Clarkson interviewed numerous people and referenced many sources in compiling this history of those lure......more

Goodreads review by Estelle on January 02, 2018

This is not a particularly well-written book. Yet it is very interesting for the facts of the two generations of the Canadian daredevil Hill family and their milieu, especially for me, a native of Niagara Falls, NY. It covers the time span of approximately 1900-1980. Although the matriarch, Beatrice......more

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