"Like the appetite for a piece of dark chocolate, risk is alluring, and its taste is savory, dopamine-triggering, life-affirming, delicious."

Robert "Bud" Abbott should know. As a young man, he marched with MLK and joined the Peace Corps to avoid having to kill in Vietnam. Instead, posted to Nigeria to teach, he found himself facing down river pirates and fighting deadly snakes. And that's just from a few early years in a long life chock-full of adventure and more near-death experiences than he can count.

Eventually, Abbott found a career as a globe-trotting marine biologist, even as he embraced mysticism and started a family.

Appetite for Risk ties the dramatic experiences of his life in with digressions on the forces that have contributed to his survival. It combines the perspectives of genetic drivers (DNA), nurturing strategies, and spiritual linkages, looking back in time and generations to reveal the behavior of his ancestors as expressed in his own attitudes and actions. His advice to parents is to present numerous challenges to their children to better enable them to face and adapt to the changes inherent in our rapidly evolving global social-economic environment.