Written after a cancer diagnosis at seventy-three, and it’s Roberts taking stock of a life of risk and asking what exploration was ever for. He goes through the history — polar travel, the Amazon, the great cave systems, first ascents — and keeps turning back to his own record and to the friends who died. There’s a hard passage about a partner killed on an early climb that he had written around for decades. He doesn’t arrive at a consoling answer, and the honesty about what the obsession took from him and from others is the reason to read it. David and I talked often about him contributing to Adventure Journal, but books kept his attention, especially when he knew his time was limited. He offered us one of the most poignant sections of this book, and we published it.