As for those adventures, which ones are more significant to a boy than those at summer camp? For years, if anyone asked me what my happiest moments were, I’d have recalled summers spent in a stretch of wood, field and rustic buildings nestled in the North Carolina foothills, safe in a haven of boyhood whose call has lingered to this day. That same call spurred 33-year-old Josh Wolk to return one last time to the beloved camp of his youth. Cabin Pressure: One Man’s Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth as a Camp Counselor is Wolk’s humorous account of his life in a cabin with 10 hormonal 14-year-olds, a science teacher turned mountain-climbing god, a 67-year-old Peter Pan and an aging extreme kayaker who thinks anyone who won’t jump off a 25-foot-high bridge into a Maine river can’t possibly be a real man. Wolk’s writing is fluid, funny and compelling, and his observations of human foibles whether in the campers, the counselors or himself are spot-on. More often than not, I saw my own camp experiences mirrored in Wolk’s account, and once again found myself traveling back to my old summer home a trip every man secretly longs to take.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
