Product Description

Richard Hammond is one of our most in-demand and best-loved television presenters. On September 20, 2006, he suffered a serious brain injury following a high-speed car crash, and the nation held its breath. On the Edge is his compelling account of life before and after the accident and an honest description of his year of recovery, full of drama and incident. It is also, perhaps, his explanation of why, as a married man and father of two young daughters, he was prepared to risk all by strapping himself to the front of a jet engine with the power of eleven Formula One cars. A daredevil and a petrolhead long before his association with Top Gear, Richard tells the story of his life as an adrenalin junkie, from the small boy showing off with ridiculous stunts on his bicycle to the adolescent with a near-obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of petrol. After a series of jobs in local radio, he graduated to television and eventually to Top Gear, one of the world's most popular shows, upgrading his car with each step up the ladder. His insights into the personalities, the camaraderie and, of course, the stunts for which Top Gear has become famous make compulsive reading. It was whilst filming for Top Gear, driving a jet-powered dragster at speeds over 300mph, that a tyre burst and the car left the track and rolled over, burying him in the earth. He was airlifted to hospital and hovered near death for several days. His wife Mindy tells the story of the anxious hours and days of watching and waiting until he finally emerged from his coma. In an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing, she and Richard then piece together the stages of his recovery as his shattered mind slowly reformed, leaving him sometimes lucid and plausible, sometimes confused and angry, and often exhausted. The final chapter recounts his return home and his triumphant reappearance in front of the cameras.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3229 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Released on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 310 pages

Synopsis
Richard Hammond is one of our most in-demand and best-loved television presenters. On September 20, 2006, he suffered a serious brain injury following a high-speed car crash, and the nation held its breath. On the Edge is his compelling account of life before and after the accident and an honest description of his year of recovery, full of drama and incident. It is also, perhaps, his explanation of why, as a married man and father of two young daughters, he was prepared to risk all by strapping himself to the front of a jet engine with the power of eleven Formula One cars. A daredevil and a petrolhead long before his association with Top Gear, Richard tells the story of his life as an adrenalin junkie, from the small boy showing off with ridiculous stunts on his bicycle to the adolescent with a near-obsessive attraction to speed and the smell of petrol. After a series of jobs in local radio, he graduated to television and eventually to Top Gear, one of the world's most popular shows, upgrading his car with each step up the ladder. His insights into the personalities, the camaraderie and, of course, the stunts for which Top Gear has become famous make compulsive reading.It was whilst filming for Top Gear, driving a jet-powered dragster at speeds over 300mph, that a tyre burst and the car left the track and rolled over, burying him in the earth.

He was airlifted to hospital and hovered near death for several days. His wife Mindy tells the story of the anxious hours and days of watching and waiting until he finally emerged from his coma. In an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing, she and Richard then piece together the stages of his recovery as his shattered mind slowly reformed, leaving him sometimes lucid and plausible, sometimes confused and angry, and often exhausted. The final chapter recounts his return home and his triumphant reappearance in front of the cameras.

About the Author
Richard Hammond is internationally famous for co-presenting Top Gear over the last 4 years with Jeremy Clarkson; he also presented Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky 1, Should I Worry About...? on BBC 1 and Time Commanders on BBC 2. His Richard Hammond's 5 O'Clock Show was shown every weekday on ITV1 during January and February 2006, and he is a team captain on the BBC2 quiz show, Petrolheads. He writes a weekly column in The Daily Mirror. His crash whilst filming for Top Gear in September 2006 made him a household name.

Customer Reviews

undemanding read, nice touches,
Language wise this is an undemanding, non-technical book, by which I mean you wont learn to be a brain surgeon or rocket car scientist by reading it.

You will learn how one couple coped with and travelled through a terrible thing happening to one of them.

That the 'physically injured party' is well known make this a little like watching a film where you know the ending (think Apollo 13) but are interested to know how you get there - and when you do get to the end you realise you didn't know more than the basic, I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say 'he lived & went back to work' but it is good to know how he feels about that.

It's also good to read Mindy Hammonds' point of view - I particularly liked touches where they remembered things differently, he remembers a green car outside, she a blue one...I enjoyed that side of things very much.

The only thing is I would have liked two things, a bit more detail about the type of brain injury Richard suffered and also a bit more of the going back to work, getting into life again stuff. The end was a little rushed.

Enjoy.

Fantastic. A riveting read for all ages
Now I'm 12 years old, but no, I'm not writing a review for the authored..kids..adapted thing. I'm sure you've gathered I prefer the real deal. This book truly is magnificently written. From cover to cover I was 'on the edge' (I wonder if this is where the book got it's name?) of my seat. I know many people say this, but this time it's literal. I couldn't put it down for the life of me.

I was reading this in the garden. I spent 15 or so minutes reading it when a wasp starting buzzing around my head, and yes I'm sure all of you reading this will know how unutterably irritating this is.
So I stood up and started hitting it with a tea-towel, but by the time I could get anywhere near it it had already flown away. And all the time I was doing this, I was still reading the book, so no wonder.
And then I spent 15 minutes standing up reading it, because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or what was going on around me, so I couldn't sit down........I was inside the book. Weird?! Spooky?! Yeah, I think so too.
When you're reading this book you get a feeling you're there. Especially the parts that Richard's wife, Mindy, wrote.
In the part where she was driving to the hospital where Richard was, I felt like I was there. In the car with her.

This book is a compilation, really, of everything that happened to the Hammonds as a family. As a whole. Everything you could possibly want to know is included in On The Edge.
It's the story of how the family adapted to knowing one of their members had brain damage. What you would tell the kids. As Richard said in his book promo, how he risked his life just to strap himself to the front of a jet-engine for kicks. It's the story of how he crashed a jet powered dragster at 288 miles-per-hour.

If you're looking to read a book in the near future, or have just finished a book (probably one you've just bought from ASDA in a 3 for 2 offer with a "Richard & Judy's Summer Read" sticker on the front cover, let's not deny it), and want a truly riveting read that could keep you entertained, on the edge of your seat for hours on end, then look no further. Richard Hammond: On The Edge is one of the most fantastic accounts I've ever read.

Fan of the Hamster or not, this is unmissable.
5 STAR *****

Remarkable Love Story
What impressed me about this book was the sheer devotion of Richard and Mindy to each other and their children. Yes this is a book about a man struggling to rehabilitate after a horrific brain injury, and the tale of a man 'off the telly', but it is more than that. It is about courage, hope and resilience in the face of really daunting odds. I was very moved by this story, which is not something I was expecting at all when I first picked it up.

It is simply written and honest about the ups and downs of a horrific time in this family's life. It's not earth shattering literature, but then anyone who was expecting it to be must be slightly deranged themselves.

What really touched me is the effort both Richard and Mindy made to acknowledge the help they have received along the way both professionally and from ordinary people, and the fact that despite the fact that this was a high profile story, they keep coming back to their connection with and understanding of ordinary people who have to go through things like this and worse, with a fraction of the help provided here.