Crashing Through: a true story of risk, adventure, and the man who dared to see by Robert Kurson and Mike May

Book Description
Mike May spent his life crashing through. Blinded at age three, he defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision. Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought startling news: a revolutionary stem cell transplant surgery could restore May's vision. It would allow him to drive, to read, to see his children's faces. He began to contemplate an astonishing new world: Would music still sound the same? Would sex be different? Would he recognize himself in the mirror? Would his marriage survive? Would he still be Mike May? The procedure was filled with risks, some of them deadly, others beyond May's wildest dreams. And even if the surgery worked, history was against him. Fewer than twenty cases were known worldwide in which a person gained vision after a lifetime of blindness. Each of those people suffered desperate consequences we can scarcely imagine. There were countless reasons for May to refuse vision. He could think of only a single reason to go forward. Whatever his decision, he knew it would change his life. Robert Kurson gives us an account of one man's choice to explore what it means to see - and to truly live. Published in 2007, 306 pages.
Description from book jacket.

Research the author and the book using library resources
Information on the author’s life and works is available through our library’s online resources. Recommended online resources for Crashing Through by Robert Kurson and Mike May include Literature Resource Center and Masterfile Premier. Enter your library barcode and then use the author’s name or the book title to search for full-text encyclopedia or magazine articles.

Discussion questions
Crashing Through Reading guide from Random House

Additional Information
Barnes and Noble’s Book Club page on Crashing Through, includes an author interview and an archive of reader questions and answers from Robert Kurson

“About Mike May”, includes pictures, video and audio clips of May’s media appearances, travels, and other adventures.

NPR interview with Robert Kurson on Crashing Through 
Robert Kurson’s webpage on Crashing Through—includes some illustrative optical illusions that might be interesting for your group to look at.

Readalikes
Eavesdropping by Stephen Kuusisto
Blind people are not casual listeners. Blind since birth, Stephen Kuusisto recounts with a poet's sense of detail the surprise that comes when we are actively listening to our surroundings. There is an art to eavesdropping. As a boy he listened to Caruso records in his grandmother's attic and spent hours in the New Hampshire woods learning the calls of birds. As a grown man the writer visits cities around the world in order to discover the art of sightseeing by ear. Whether the reader is interested in disability, American poetry, music, travel, or the art of eavesdropping, he or she will find much to hear and even "see" in this unique celebration of a hearing life.

Touch the Top of the World by Erik Weihenmayer
Erik Weihenmayer was born with retinoscheses, a degenerative eye disorder that would progressively unravel his retinas. He learned from doctors that he was destined to lose his sight by age thirteen. Yet from early on he was determined to rise above this disability. In Touch the Top of the World, Erik recalls his struggle to push past the limits placed on him by his visual impairment -- and by a seeing world. Fewer than a hundred mountaineers have climbed all Seven Summits -- the highest peak on each of the seven continents. Erik Weihenmayer has reached four of the seven. Erik's story is truly one of having the vision to dream big; the courage to reach for near impossible goals; and the grit, determination, and ingenuity to transform our lives into something miraculous.

Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet
Daniel Tammet sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers. Born on a Blue Day is a triumphant and uplifting story, starting from early childhood, when Daniel was incapable of making friends and prone to tantrums, to young adulthood, when he learned how to control himself and to live independently, fell in love, experienced a religious conversion to Christianity, and most recently, emerged as a celebrity. The world's leading neuroscientists have been studying Daniel's ability to solve complicated math problems in one fell swoop by seeing shapes rather than making step-by-step calculations. Here he explains how he does it, and how he is able to learn new languages so quickly, simply by absorbing their patterns. Fascinating and inspiring, Born on a Blue Day explores what it's like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human -- our minds.

Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
Robert Kurson’s debut book. Two recreational scuba divers discover a lost World War II German U-boat sunk just 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. No government, navy, expert, or historian can figure out the identity of the boat -- or the 56 dead sailors inside. The divers set out on a six-year quest to solve the mystery of the boat and its history. Along the way, their friends die inside the wreck, their marriages rupture, they nearly bankrupt themselves, and come very close to dying themselves, before managing to solve one of the greatest mysteries of World War II.