Careers of Danger and Daring
Cleveland Moffett
Lu par LibriVox Volunteers
In this volume of adventure the author depicts the lives of certain humble modern heroes whose unconscious courage ordinarily goes unnoticed. Mr. Moffett
has chosen unusual and picturesque careers, and has offered dramatic scenes from the lives of the steeple climber, the diver, the balloonist,the pilot, the bridge builder, the fireman, the aerial acrobat, the wild animal trainer, the dynamite worker and lastly the locomotive driver. (Summary by annise)
And it has great pictures - ever wondered what the top of a steeple really looked like? Some listeners may find the "Wild Animal Tamer" stories distressing - I did. I would suggest you just don't download that section - the rest is well worth listening to. (10 hr 24 min)
Chapitres
Critiques
Fun Look into the Past!
TriciaG
This was written when divers had to have air pumped to them and sent via a hose - no SCUBA gear; when hydrogen was considered a viable gas for balloons; when horses pulled fire engines, which used steam to pump water at the fire site. It was written WAY before OSHA and workplace safety laws. The author provides lots of anecdotes and stories from the various professionals, as well as attempting to do what they do: he climbs part of a steeple, dives down to a shipwreck, tries out the flying trapeze, etc. and describes the sensations. By the way, the pilots described are not airplane pilots, but river and harbor pilots. (I suppose this is obvious from the chapter subtitles.) Readers were generally very good. I only had problems understanding one reader; I stopped listening and read those chapters instead.
fascinating
Conceptualman
There are things we don't think about in our modern world. Things we would never even think about if not for books like this one that come from the era when such discoveries were new and fresh in the minds of people.