I am going to be pretty brutal with this review. There is some good information in the book. Maybe 10% of the book is useful information and the rest of it is just stories about other people who have traveled and been sponsored. I do not include the appendices in the 10%. If it were up to me, I would probably trash the book and just keep the appendices. I am not a fan of reading about other people’s adventures when I could be having my own. The majority of the stories in there were taken up by either mountain climbing, dog sledding, or sailing. None of those things are overly appealing to me. I did like reading about all the awesome Minnesotan explorers, but not enough to read an entire book about it. Because this book isn’t really in my particular niche (I expected and hoped it would be far more useful), I would give the book around 1.5 stars. I forced myself to finish it, which was pretty painful. The appendices included, I would have to up the rating to a 3. The appendices are really quite useful and provide some helpful resources.
If you’re looking to get some useful tips on how to get sponsored, the appendices are awesome, but I don’t know if it is really worth the price of the book. It was published in 2009, so the information is still pretty good. If you have a Kindle, I would totally go for it. If you can find a used copy, go for it. If you are interested in mountain climbing, record breaking sailing, or dog sledding well, go ahead and read this book. For me, it just wasn’t what I was hoping it would be. That’ll teach me to have expectations.