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, 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 socioeconomic environment. Appetite for Risk relates memorable adventures and survival skills in Hawaii, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. Herein are half seconds to disaster over and over while scuba diving, parachute jumps, confrontations with river pirates, escaping from a fire in the tallest hotel in the world, and standing up to a gunman on the FBI Most Wanted List. Thoughts on taking risks to survive on coming climate change, socioeconomic, and political challenges.