John Goddard, one of the world's most famous anthropologists, explorers, and adventurers, passed away Friday, May 17th in Glendale, CA, after battling a rare form of cancer known as Waldenström's Macroglobulinemia.

Called “the real-life Indiana Jones” by the LA Times, Goddard will be remembered as the world's greatest goal achiever and survivor of numerous edge-of-death experiences through his 88 1/2 years of life. He documented his adventures on film and showed them to thousands of youth and adults across the globe, inspiring them to set and achieve goals. His motto was: To dare is to do - to fear is to fail.



Click here to know more about John Goddard

One rainy afternoon an inspired 15-year old boy named John Goddard sat down at his kitchen table in Los Angeles and wrote three words at the top of a yellow pad, "My Life List." Under that heading he wrote down 127 goals.

These were not simple or easy goals. They included climbing the world's major mountains, exploring from source to mouth the longest rivers of the world, piloting the world's fastest aircraft, running a mile in five minutes and reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

Now, a generation later, he has accomplished 109 of these quests, and has logged an impressive list of records in achieving them.

Click here to view the list of goals.
 

This Spotlight on John Goddard was broadcast on DATELINE (NBC)

 
The Survivor captures some of these adventures as it follows his experiences from boyhood, through his teen years and into adulthood. Each individual adventure is sure to thrill you-from the exquisite details of exotic locales, to the raw power of Pacific storms, to the hair-raising brushes with death-always emphasizing the danger and exhilaration intrinsic to the adventurous life. Unique to this book, though, is the author's reverence for life and all living things, his honesty in admitting his own recklessness, his awe and gratitude to the supreme force that miraculously allowed him to survive each of these close calls with death, and his ability to use his experiences and the lessons he learned to set and achieve clear, meaningful goals.

Click here to buy "The Survivor"