Canongate The Third Man Factor

'Exciting, edge-of-your-seat tales. It's like revisiting the greatest hits of exploration and dare-devilry, but from a new angle.' Evening Standard The Third Man Factor tells the revealing story behind an extraordinary idea: that people at the very edge of death, often adventurers or explorers, experience a benevolent presence beside them that encourages them to make one final effort to survive. If only a handful of people had ever experienced the Third Man, it might be dismissed as an unusual delusion, but over the years the experience has occurred again and again: to mountaineers, divers, polar explorers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, aviators, astronauts and 9/11 survivors. All have escaped traumatic events only to tell strikingly similar stories of having experienced the close presence of a helper or guardian. In The Third Man Factor John Geiger combines history, scientific analysis and great adventure stories to explain this secret to survival, the Third Man who - in the words of legendary Italian climber Reinhold Messner - 'leads you out of the impossible'. 'Engrossing and formidable' Los Angeles Times ...