Roberto Canessa, a former rugby player that survived the famous 1972 plane crash in the Andes, has written a memoir.
The accident has been the subject of several books and was the inspiration for the 1993 Hollywood film Alive starring Ethan Hawke. The latest memoir, I Had To Survive: How a Plane Crash in The Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives, tells Canessa’s story of survival and how it inspired him to seek a career as a pediatric cardiologist. National Geographic interviewed Canessa about his decision to write the book:
I encouraged everyone to write his own book because they are 16 different stories of survival. Personally, I believe this was a kind of experiment by a malicious hand that decided to throw onto the mountain a group of young rugby players. University students with education and a belief in God—ideal guinea pigs for an experiment in human behavior. Who survived? It wasn’t the smartest, most intelligent ones. The ones who survived were those who most felt the joy of living. That gave them a reason to survive.