Where are they ( )

The author covers eight 20th Century people who disappeared generally doing what they loved -- scowing down the Grand Canyon, going after Pancho Villa, circumnavigating the globe. Perhaps unavoidably considering the topic, there are a lot of unanswered questions and I found myself wanting more. More information, more stories, just...more.

The writing style is very conversational, with digressions here and there that add to the story. I would recommend it, but I would have liked to see it expanded as well as see photographs that the author describes in the text but are not published in the book.

As an aside, the body of one of the lost explorers, Everett Ruess, was identified a few weeks ago and his death explained, so I suppose he is no longer Lost. ( )

I enjoyed this book - more than I expected to. It gave a personable, yet thoughtful and objective account of the circumstances under which several famous (or less so) explorers and travelers disappeared, leaving mysteries and personal loss in their wake. Balkan devotes a fair amount of time discussing the current state of knowledge (academic, scientific, and otherwise) regarding their disappearance, search efforts, and likely scenarios leading up to their last days. Some of the theories surrounding the missing range from the lurid to the absurd, but Balkan's treatment of both the missing and of the theories is considerate of personalities, the times they lived in, and other important context that seems to have been overlooked in other accounts. Throughout, his prose reads smoothly, interspersed with anecdotes and observations about the times in which the missing traveler made their way. Balkan's perspective as a well-traveled mountaineer informs his recounting and examination of these people's last days. ( )

I wanted to like this book. But I didn't.

It held out a lot of promise, offering up seven chapters, each focused on a different adventurer that vanished. The book started with Ambrose Pierce, the Civil War writer that disappeared fighting in the Mexican War. Each chapter focused on a person lost in the wild.

Unfortunately, the author never made us care about any of the people or the reasons they were lost. There was some narrative about the person and what they were doing. Then he collects some of the stories about the disappearance trying to pull the pieces together to explain the disappearance. It just never got convincing or interesting. ( )

Vanished! by Evan L. Balkan is one of those books that inspires me to learn more about the historical figures within its pages. A somewhat slim volume, each chapter is a quickly digested story about the personalities of the missing explorers and the events that led to their disappearances. The writing is easy-going and conversational, and we are led through a forensic exploration as to which is the most likely fate of the adventurers. However, we are reminded that many questions remain unanswered. ( )