On the morning of October 12, 1972, a plane crashed into an inaccessible region of the Argentine Andes. For 72 harrowing days, the survivors, most of them members of a top Uruguayan rugby team, fought to stay alive on a windy glacier without food, blankets, warm clothing, or means of communicating with the outside world. They struggled against hunger, forcing themselves to eat strips of leather and, eventually, human flesh stripped from their dead colleagues. Nando Parrado, one of the survivors of the crash, tells his story in Miracle in the Andes, and for the first time discusses how and why he survived. This enthralling tale is testimony to one man’s unquenchable instinct for survival, and the resilience of the human spirit. This book is brutal and shocking in places, but an impressive reminder of what the human spirit can achieve. More than a companion to the 1970s bestselling chronicle of the disaster, Alive, Parrado’s vivid account gives this book a power and level of emotion that only a firsthand account can provide. Parrado’s extraordinary quality is to remind those of us living within the firm safety net of society that we are all capable of pushing ourselves to the limit. But more important, it teaches us not to waste a single moment, or a single breath. The editors of Amazon.com selected Miracle in the Andes as one of the Top 50 Books of 2006.