The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz, is a story about an amazing journey of a group of refugees, who had escaped from a Soviet labor camp, and then in order to preserve their newly reacquired freedom had to walk very far away from the camp. Incredibly, unbelievably far. How far did they go? The path taken by the vagabond refugees was a long, arduous route of about 4,000 miles (6,500 km) which is the distance between upper-Siberia and Calcutta, India.

The events in this book exemplify the hardiness of the human spirit and body. It is this quality of the story that is the most inspirational. It makes me feel like I can do almost anything that is physically possible. If Rawicz, a former polish soldier, and the men he wrote about can survive their journey through some of the harshest conditions the Earth has to offer, without proper supplies, then I can definitely deal with high school and the emotional strain of adolescence. The amazing telling of this unbelievable story, compounded with the feeling it gives me after I finish it make it my favorite book. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone.