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 enlarge | Author: Richard Grant
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 21108
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416534407
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.210484
EAN: 9781416534402
ASIN: 1416534407
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
 INcredibly entertaining November 12, 2008
Rarely do I find a book that I won't read more than 50 pages of at a sitting, so as to save some of its goodness for further joy. This is one such tome.
Grant is a sensible British fellow living in Tucson who falls in love with the Sierra Madre and takes us with him on a cross-Madre jaunt that is often not so jaunty. He avoids the typical endless cross-cultural references and sticks mainly to the facts, ma'am.
There are so many funny, touching, harsh, and scary moments here that it becomes a phantasmagoria of nuttiness; the mind fairly reels at what a different universe is going on at this very moment just a few hundred miles from where I am writing this.
Grant's writing is simple in all the best ways, and his humor and humanity shine through at all times, as does his wanderlust and willingness to call himself on his own foibles. And if you want some insight as to why the USA is filling up with Mexicans, here's a fine place to start. Above all else, God's Middle Finger is just a plain fun read, a true page-turner that you can't help but marvel at and learn from at the same time.
I'll be buying copies of this for various friends, as great a tribute to a book as I can pay.
 Don't Try this at Home November 8, 2008
Let me begin by saying that I enjoyed reading "God's Middle Finger". Travel books don't always read like a novel that makes you anxious to know what happens next. "God's Middle Finger" does just that and, except for maybe an early speed bump or two, it maintains that artistic energy throughout the book. I selected this book because "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" was one of the two or three best books I had read before I was 21 (and I suspect it still makes the top ten). I had a youthful fantasy for many years of going there to mine for gold. The brilliance of B. Traven long out-lived the imagined brilliance of gold and I settled into more practical pursuits as I matured. I looked forward to a slight reincarnation of those long lost dreams. However, I got a rather different set of impressions thanks to author Richard Grant.
Grant portrays my imagined heaven as a reality of hell. The scenery beckons but there's a "Beware of the Dog" sign posted at every entrance. How can people live in such a violent society where murder and rape are common place? As I delved further into the book I kept coming across seemingly normal people who had lived in various idealic locations in the Sierra Madre without having even once been murdered. There were Mennonites, Mormons, Scientists, Industrialists, social workers and the like whom I kept wanting to warn about their impending doom if they didn't leave the area immediately. Somehow, there were villages, towns and cities in which people lived their lives without knowing the evils that awaited them. Fortunately for the reader, our author and travel guide rarely met such condemned ignorants. He was always in the midst of the next drinking party interacting with the REAL inhabitants of the Sierra Madre. It seemed so strange when innocent tourists would happen by totally unaware of their pending doom.
OK, Richard Grant was up front about his love of various form of intoxicants. He chose to see the Sierra Madre through blood-shot eyes and, frankly, it made the trip all the more exciting sitting back in my room while he was taking all the chances. Along the way, he shared a lot of really interesting bits of information such as the last of the "wild" Apaches, Pancho Villa, the economic impact of the illegal drug business and the amazing Tarahumara Indians. The Tarahumaras and their incredible ability to outrun the rest of the world while taking beer and cigarette breaks along the way was the highlight of the book for me. Grant did spend some time with some sober people and he has some very significant observations to offer. I'm just going to have to get around to reading my copy of "The Labyrinth of Soletude" now that he's quoted it so often and so effectively. However, I think I'd like to read a "Tea-totaller's Guide to the Sierra Madre" (if there IS one). I mean, after literarily revisiting the Sierra Madre, I'd like to believe that I actually COULD go there.
ULTIMATE "ARMCHAIR ADVENTURE" -- AND IT'S TRUE November 2, 2008
Beginning just south of the Arizona-Mexican border, the Sierra Madre mountains extend almost a thousand miles and rise about 11,000 feet. Within the wilds of this rugged and often forbidding terrain, the ordinary rules of law and civilized society do not apply.
When I picked up this book, I had visions of Humphrey Bogart in the classic movie "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" where banditos taunt: "We don't need no stinkin' badges."
The reality is that the SM (what an accurate abbreviation for the mountain range) is a place where outsiders are not welcome. Assorted bandits, drug runners, dope farmers (marijuana and opium thrives here), bizarre religious extremists (including Mormon isolationists), cave-dwelling Indians (Tarahumara) among others call this place home. Drugs -- growing, processing and selling -- are the main thing these groups have in common. And murder is uncommonly common. Once in a while the mexican Army burns a dope crop, but, for the most part, they stay away and leave this outlaw kingdom to the ruthless drug lords.
At the beginning of the book, writer Richard Grant's speaks of his "unfortunate fascination" with this hellish place. He ignored warnings that he would be killed if he ventured theret. It almost happened. In the closing of the book, Grant writes:
I never wanted to set foot in the Sierra Madre again. The mkean drunken hillbillie who
lived up there could all feud themselves into extinction and burn in hell. I was out of
courage, out of patience, out of compassion. They were sons of whoring mothers who
had been fornicating with dogs.
That was actually a rather mild thing to say after a night of running for his life when coked-to-the-gills Mexican hillbillies hunted him just for the sport of it.
What is really cool about Grant -- perhaps the best travel writer you will ever find -- is how, solely for the reader's delight, he risks his life.
Self-deprecating, darkly humorous, richly detail and smoothly told, there is a palpable, visceral thrill to this true tale of a foolhardy obsession.
This makes most other armchair adventures pale in comparison. This is a singular book. Highest recommendation.
A Real Eye-opener October 31, 2008
This is truly an accurate description of the situation up in those "hills". I can certainly understand the authors decision to change topics when writing in the future...he is one lucky dude to have survived this experience!!!
W R Bodrak
Entertaining October 25, 2008
In this well-written, entertaining true adventure story/travelogue, the author freely refracts his often bizarre experiences through the prism of his circumstances (recently divorced, inability to settle down to a conventional life, attraction to danger...), adds a dash of wry British humor and provides a piecemeal history of the Sierra Madre. The result is a read that had me alternating between fascination and recoil and even a touch of boredom now and then. (Too much background in places?) The episodic nature of the narrative, in which one chapter didn't always seem to follow from the one preceding it, didn't leave me on the edge of my seat, anticipating what would come next, but it did make it easy to put down and pick up again. While the book wasn't always my cup of tea, I do recognize its appeal to a different audience and would recommend it to people who enjoy action/adventure nonfiction and gravitate toward dark stories infused with testosterone and tension.
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