Books : The Fire Never Dies: One Man's Raucous Romp Down the Road of Food, Passion, and Adventure (Special Interest)

Rating: - Guy stuff liable to make the Gentler Sex cringe
For those of us whose idea of a foreign vacation is a cruise to the Greek Isles, castle hopping through Britain, or an auto tour of the Swiss Alps, Richard Sterling's THE FIRE NEVER DIES is likely to inspire a fascination ranging from the bemused to the horrified. The book's thirty chapters span the period from 1975, when Sterling was a naval weapons specialist aboard the U.S. cruiser Oklahoma City sailing Vietnamese coastal waters, to roughly the present. Virtually all take place in Southeast Asia, or Africa, or Baja California, and almost all center around an unforgettable meal or memorable woman. A Real Man's needs are pretty basic.

I think my favorite tale was that of the time when Richard, gripped tight in the misery of nicotine withdrawal, was part of the ship's detail assigned the task of transferring nuclear warheads from the deepest hold of the Oklahoma City to a munitions ship steaming alongside in seas made turbulent by a nearby storm. In other chapters, he's trolling for pickpockets in Saigon, or searching for a legendary (and possibly mythical) hooker in Olongopo City, or arm wrestling a local tough guy in the Burmese jungle, or watching a mob beat up a thief alongside his lunch table in Nairobi. And speaking of food, some of his meals are in the Yuk! category: roosters' gonads (with garlic) in Saigon, fish topped with crumbled red ants in Borneo. I guess one must take what one finds in the absence of better fare, or at least a McDonald's, but, jeez, Sterling actually seems to enjoy it.

I have my favorite armchair travel guides: Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle, Eric Newby. However, I can't recall a work by any travel essayist that better captures the pure essence of adventure driven by curiosity and sheer gutsiness like THE FIRE NEVER DIES. I certainly wouldn't have the pluck to eat deep fried potato bugs on the banks of the Mekong, but Sterling did, and I admire his style. The only reason I'm not awarding 5 stars is because he spent an inordinate amount of time in Baja California, an area too geographically near to my world and too historically uninteresting to be personally appealing. Richard, beyond that, I salute you with a tip of my Indiana Jones hat.