WINGS Announces the Launch of Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible by John Geiger

The Third Man Factor; Surviving the Impossible features WINGS Fellows Ann Bancroft and Steffi Schwabe

The Third Man Factor, hailed by The Wall Street Journal as "highly readable, often gripping", is a biography of an extraordinary idea: That people at the very edge of death, often adventurers or explorers, experience a sense of an incorporeal being beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive. If only a handful of people had ever experienced the Third Man, it might be dismissed as an unusual delusion shared by a few overstressed minds. But the amazing thing is this: over the years, the experience has occurred again and again, to 9/11 survivors, mountaineers, divers, polar explorers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, aviators and astronauts. All have escaped traumatic events only to tell strikingly similar stories of having experienced the close presence of a helper or guardian. The mysterious force, which has touched the likes of diver Steffi Schwabe and polar explorer Ann Bancroft, has been explained as everything from hallucination to divine intervention. Recent neurological research suggests something else. In The Third Man Factor John Geiger combines history, scientific analysis and great adventure stories to explain this secret to survival, a Third Man who -- in the words of legendary Italian climber Reinhold Messner -- "leads you out of the impossible." John Geiger is the bestselling author of five books of non-fiction, including the international bestseller Frozen In Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition. He is a governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a member of the Advisory Committee of Wings Worldquest.

Reviews...

"Whether this 'guardian angel' factor is neurological or divine, Geiger's fresh, insightful book will tell readers 'things that are not easily explainable, but no less real for that.'" - Publishers Weekly

"An intelligent rendering of a chilling phenomenon." - Kirkus Reviews

Coming events with John Geiger:

Wednesday, February 10, start time TBD National Geographic Live, Washington, DC Thursday, February 11, 7 PM National Arts Club, New York