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| The Last Season (P.S.) | 
| Author: Eric Blehm
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $4.18
You Save: $10.77 (72%)
New (44) from $4.18
Avg. Customer Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 29750
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0060583010
Dewey Decimal Number: 590
EAN: 9780060583019
ASIN: 0060583010
Publication Date: February 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New & Unread Book thatHave Remainder Mark/ May Have Slight Handling Wear From Bookstore Shelf IN-STOCK Now For Immediate Secure Packaging & Delivery!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Good if you like real-life mystery stories May 23, 2008
I picked this book off the shelf as a birthday gift for a friend who loves backcountry adventures and turned me on to Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which I read in hardback some years ago. I like the central character in this book better than I liked Krakauer's all-too-young Alaska adventurer. Anyway, my friend read this one, loved it, and gave it back to me to read. The evolving story did indeed keep me up nights working through to the end. I didn't let myself read the resolution in advance --- actually I looked for it and it was difficult to find. Which was good. I am sorry to see at least one reviewer gave it away. It's true that some of the detail gets in the way of a quick read, and for that reason I'm giving the book a four. But I always found myself going back to make sure I didn't miss anything. The book is a fascinating study of a real person and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a true life mystery, whether they love the backcountry or not.
 Way too long and a bummer to boot March 16, 2008
I found this book to be tedious and depressing and yet I managed to read the entire thing, wanting to find out what finally happened. Randy Morgenson grew up in an idyllic setting (Yosemite Valley), was raised by caring parents, yet managed to make a mess of his life due to what seems to have been an obsession for living alone in the beauty of the Sierra. He married, but was away from home at least half the time, and never had children. Although a legendary and exemplary ranger, he was unfaithful to his long-suffering wife in a three-year affair, became ultimately disillusioned with his obsession, and finally died alone apparently having drowned after falling through a snow bridge into an alpine pond while on patrol. Tragic and depressing.
 The Last Season March 10, 2008
A winner! Eric Blehm captures the head and heart of Ranger Randy Morgenson, who devoted his entire adult worklife to backcountry rangering. It's as much in the telling of the tale as the tale itself that makes this a great read. Blehm gets into Morgenson's head in a way that perhaps, Morgenson could not get into his own head.
"The Last Season" is the saga of the often humdrum duties of a backcountry ranger, combined with a psychological study of Ranger Morgenson that makes this a compelling, memorable read.
A great book for backpackers January 22, 2008
This book would be great to read on a ten-day backpacking trip.
As a backpacker, I have often wondered just what sort of lives are lead by those unique individuals called "rangers." This book gives a good glimpse into the life of one of those lonely dedicated people. The chapters devoted to the search efforts are riveting. The chapters that describe Morgenson's life are necessarily slower and more pedestrian, but they serve to give texture to the overall story. I actually found the descriptions of Morgenson's colleagues to be more interesting than those of Morgenson himself, perhaps because I got the feeling that, even though Randy Morgenson was certainly a highly respected naturalist and a devoted idealist, his fellow rangers (e.g., Durkee, Nash) were by far the finer people. This is a tragic story, with the silver lining being that the book does a good job of communicating the high standards and code of conduct to which backcountry rangers hold themselves.
 Reccommended for the Outdoorsy January 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Eric Blehm's account of the life and subsequent search for NPS Ranger Randy Morgenson is a quality piece journalism, part biography, part mystery. For the most part Blehm accomplished what he sent out to do, but the book would have benefited from a more ruthless editor. Blehm gets us to care about a ranger who goes missing and from the outset such a story might have limited appeal. Morgenson was deeply, abidingly passionate about about the way wilderness should be treated and he spread his gospel the best way he could, directly to the people there in the High Sierra national parks he worked for 28 years. Much of the book reads like a tribute, a lengthy eulogy to a fallen hero. Sadly, Morgenson would not have received such deserved accolades had he not gone missing, and Blehm falls prey, at times, to our tendency to mythologize given such circustances. The strongest chapters dealt with the search after Morgenson went missing and his friends attempts to piece together an account of his last days from the little available evidence. Here Blehm captures the reader and builds drama, only to burst the bubble with lengthy interruptions dealing with his upbringing, marital problems and blurbs from his personnel files and logbooks. Chapters devoted to his years spent in the backcountry hold appeal for anyone who appreciates the majestic High Sierra wilderness, but could have been much tighter. Blehm's insistence on sticking to a structure and rhythm make it necessary for him to pad aspects of Morgenson's life and career and for that the storytelling suffers from bloat in places. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who's spent time pounding trails or summiting peaks in the Sierra backcountry. Anyone else might find it more weighty than the subject merits.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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