[Laurence Gonzales's] writing is not so much about a subject; it comes from within the subject. He steps out on the wire, or onto the scaffolding of a skyscraper, and grapples with the essence of the human act. Whether he is on a Coast Guard cutter hunting drug dealers off the Cuban coast, upside down in a stunt plane at three thousand feet, on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, or landing on a heaving aircraft carrier deck in the middle of the ocean, he always becomes one with worlds that are hidden from ordinary life. And the reader becomes one with the vigorous, astonishing, and masterful prose. These essays beat with a life all their own.