One of humanity’s deepest taboos is cannibalism. This is what makes the 1993 movie Alive so disturbingly compelling. Alive is the true story of a plane crash where forty-five Uruguayan rugby players are forced to survive off the bodies of the dead.

In Survive: Stories of Castaways and Cannibals, Nate Hardcastle has collected sixteen stories of people in survival situations, both fictional and non-fictional. Cannibalism occurs in twelve of the sixteen stories! What is a human being capable of doing when stretched to the edge of survival? Each account is gripping—some are heartbreaking.

Survive is packed full of top-notch writing, from Patrick O’Brian to Mark Twain to Jack London. The stories take you from icy antarctic sleeping bags to the deserts of the American West. Each account will make you question, “What would I do?”

—Nate Hardcastle, ed., Survive: Stories of Castaways and Cannibals (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001).