I'd enjoyed - and been horrified by - Death in Yellowstone, which recounted many of the ways in which people have died while visiting or working in Yellowstone Park, and when I saw a post from mlbish about a similar book about the Grand Canyon I had to get a copy.

While the differences in terrain result in a different variety of accidents, there are common themes, primarily that of tourists simply ignoring safety advice and assuming that because they're at a tourist attraction they're somehow automatically safe from harm. Many of the cases described here are the direct result of someone being careless, often mixing booze and bravado with deadly results - but some of them, the most heartbreaking ones, involve the deaths of innocents: young children left in the car while the adults went to the rim, only to have the car roll... And there's a very sad account of a young boy who suffered heat stroke from dehydration, all the while walking the trail with his family, who had water with them but did not realize that an active child who didn't feel thirsty might get in serious trouble in a matter of a few hours.

There are tales of the earliest explorers of the canyon walls and the river, and of more recent incidents in which people get too close to the edge - usually for photo ops - and simply tumble off. The ease with which one can get lost in such a vast canyon if one strays off the trail is emphasized by many accounts.

The book includes an account of the 1956 mid-air collision of two airplanes, the worst of a number of plane crashes in the area.

The chapters are illustrated with petroglyph-style icons; Chapter 1, "Say, how many people fall here?", has a figure toppling from a cliff, and the "flash flood" chapter shows someone struggling in rising water against a cliff face. And the "freak accidents" chapter shows an understandably-upset figure being beset by a snake, a centipede, and a bolt of lightning - though as far as I recall, none of the cases in that chapter inflicted all three of those things on anyone at the same time {wry grin}.

Not all the cases here are tragedies; the authors included many near-misses and daring rescues. But the book emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the demands of this spectacular natural wonder.

I plan to donate this book to the ongoing charity-book-sale shelves inside Hannaford's at around noon. [They sell donated books for low prices, with the proceeds going to benefit various local charities.] Hope the buyer enjoys the book!

*** Released for the 2014 Four Elements challenge, for "canyon". ***

*** Released for the 2014 Oh the Places We Can Go challenge. ***