Exposure: How an Outlier’s Journey Illuminates the Extremes of Power, Vitality, and Possibility

Dutch extreme athlete Hof (The Wim Hof Method) chronicles his unorthodox life in this impressionistic and uneven illustrated memoir. In the 1980s, Hof lived with his wife and young children in an abandoned orphanage in Amsterdam, a period he recalls fondly (“We lived in freedom. Society was outside those walls... inside we had space to think”). Idealism gave way to despair, however, after the family tried and failed to open an ashram in India; later, Hof’s wife died by suicide. Widowed with four young kids, Hof found solace in cold plunges into icy lakes (“It was the only way to stop the thought loops I experienced”), setting the stage for decades spent testing his body’s limits. Among other episodes, he recounts becoming an outdoor guide and leading groups through forbidding landscapes, and winning Guinness world records for running the fastest half-marathon barefoot on ice and snow and swimming the longest distance under ice. These and other recollections are accompanied by striking photos—Hof standing atop breathtaking mountain peaks or swimming beneath frozen lakes—though their effect is dampened by muddled prose and vague motivational quotes (“Go past your captive mind. Feel your essence. It is with you here and now”). Only the most devoted “Ice Man” fans need apply. (Nov.)