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Robert Roper's Fatal Mountaineer is a gripping look at Willi Unsoeld and the epic climbs that defined him--a classic narrative…
blending action with ethics, fame with tragedy, a man's ambition with a father's anguish.In 1963, Willi Unsoeld became an international hero for his conquest of the West Ridge of Everest. A charismatic professor of philosophy, Unsoeld was one of the greatest climbers of the twentieth century, a man whose raw physical power and casual fearlessness inspired a generation of adventurers. In 1976, during an expedition to Nanda Devi, the tallest peak in India, Unsoeld's philosophy of spiritual growth through mortal risk was tragically tested. The outcome of that expedition continues to fuel one of the most fascinating debates in mountaineering history.Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu
Par Christopher Heaney. 2011
In 1911, a young Peruvian boy led an American explorer and Yale historian named Hiram Bingham into the ancient Incan…
citadel of Machu Picchu. Hidden amidst the breathtaking heights of the Andes, this settlement of temples, tombs and palaces was the Incas' greatest achievement. Tall, handsome, and sure of his destiny, Bingham believed that Machu Picchu was the Incas' final refuge, where they fled the Spanish Conquistadors. Bingham made Machu Picchu famous, and his dispatches from the jungle cast him as the swashbuckling hero romanticized today as a true Indiana Jones-like character. But his excavation of the site raised old specters of conquest and plunder, and met with an indigenous nationalism that changed the course of Peruvian history. Though Bingham successfully realized his dream of bringing Machu Picchu's treasure of skulls, bones and artifacts back to the United States, conflict between Yale and Peru persists through the present day over a simple question: Who owns Inca history?In this grand, sweeping narrative, Christopher Heaney takes the reader into the heart of Peru's past to relive the dramatic story of the final years of the Incan empire, the exhilarating recovery of their final cities and the thought-provoking fight over their future. Drawing on original research in untapped archives, Heaney vividly portrays both a stunning landscape and the complex history of a fascinating region that continues to inspire awe and controversy today.Conquering the Impossible: My 12,000-Mile Journey Around the Arctic Circle
Par Mike Horn. 2005
In August 2002, Mike Horn set out on a mission that bordered on the impossible: to travel 12,000 miles around…
the globe at the Arctic Circle - alone, against all prevailing winds and currents, and without motorized transportation.Conquering the Impossible is the gripping account of Horn's grueling 27-month expedition by sail and by foot through extreme Arctic conditions that nearly cost him his life on numerous occasions. Enduring temperatures that ranged to as low as -95 degrees Fahrenheit, Horn battled hazards including shifting and unstable ice that gave way and plunged him into frigid waters, encounters with polar bears so close that he felt their breath on his face, severe frostbite in his fingers, and a fire that destroyed all of his equipment and nearly burned him alive.Complementing the sheer adrenaline of Horn's narrative are the isolated but touching human encounters the adventurer has with the hardy individuals who inhabit one of the remotest corners of the earth. From an Inuit who teaches him how to build an igloo to an elderly Russian left behind when the Soviets evacuated his remote Arctic town, Horn finds camaraderie, kindness, and assistance to help him survive the most unforgiving conditions.This awe-inspiring account is a page-turner and an Arctic survival tale in one. Most of all, it's a testament to one man's unrelenting desire to push the boundaries of human endurance.Around the World in 50 Years: My Adventure to Every Country on Earth
Par Albert Podell. 2015
This is the inspiring story of an ordinary guy who achieved two great goals that others had told him were…
impossible. First, he set a record for the longest automobile journey ever made around the world, during the course of which he blasted his way out of minefields, survived a breakdown atop the Peak of Death, came within seconds of being lynched in Pakistan, and lost three of the five men who started with him, two to disease, one to the Vietcong.After that-although it took him forty-seven more years-Albert Podell set another record by going to every country on Earth. He achieved this by surviving riots, revolutions, civil wars, trigger-happy child soldiers, voodoo priests, robbers, pickpockets, corrupt cops, and Cape buffalo. He went around, under, or through every kind of earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, snowstorm, and sandstorm that nature threw at him. He ate everything from old camel meat and rats to dung beetles and the brain of a live monkey. And he overcame attacks by crocodiles, hippos, anacondas, giant leeches, flying crabs-and several beautiful girlfriends who insisted that he stop this nonsense and marry them.Albert Podell's Around the World in 50 Years is a remarkable and meaningful tale of quiet courage, dogged persistence, undying determination, and an uncanny ability to extricate himself from one perilous situation after another-and return with some of the most memorable, frightening, and hilarious adventure stories you have ever read.Finding North: How Navigation Makes Us Human
Par George Michelsen Foy. 2016
Navigation is the key human skill. It's something we do everywhere, whether feeling our way through a bedroom in the…
dark, or charting a ship's course. But how does navigation affect our brains, our memory, ourselves? Blending scientific research and memoir, and written in beautiful prose, Finding North starts with a quest by the author to understand this most basic of human skills---and why it's in mortal peril.In 1844, Foy's great-great grandfather, captain of a Norwegian cargo ship, perished at sea after getting lost in a snowstorm. Foy decides to unravel the mystery surrounding Halvor Michelsen's death---and the roots of his own obsession with navigation---by re-creating his ancestor's trip using only period instruments. Beforehand, he meets a colorful cast of characters to learn whether men really have better directional skills than women, how cells, eels, and spaceships navigate; and how tragedy results from GPS glitches. He interviews a cabby who has memorized every street in London, sails on a Haitian cargo sloop, and visits the site of a secret navigational cult in Greece.At the heart of Foy's story is this fact: navigation and the brain's memory centers are inextricably linked. As Foy unravels the secret behind Halvor's death, he also discovers why forsaking our navigation skills in favor of GPS may lead not only to Alzheimers and other diseases of memory, but to losing a key part of what makes us human.The Minotaur at Calle Lanza
Par Zito Madu. 2024
In the fall of 2020, as the pandemic raged around the globe, Zito Madu traveled to Venice for a writing…
fellowship. There, he found a deserted, silent, but still beautiful city, “one of those extraordinarily strange places in the world.” As he details his walks through a haunted landscape, we learn about his family’s immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, his meditations on race and otherness, the small joys of daily life and solitude, and his own rage and regret. With nods to Calvino and Borges, and reminiscent of Teju Cole, The Minotaur at Calle Lanza is an unforgettable travel memoir about the mysterious transformations that may lurk inside us all.In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River
Par Ryan Schnurr. 2017
For several years, Ryan Schnurr watched media coverage of Lake Erie algae blooms with a growing sense of unease. An…
Indiana native, he wanted to learn more about role of the Maumee River in the lake's environmental woes: the Maumee is Lake Erie's largest tributary and the center of the largest watershed in the region, spanning more than 6,600 square miles of land. So in the summer of 2016, Schnurr walked and canoed the length of the river from its headwaters in Fort Wayne, Indiana to its mouth in Toledo, Ohio. In The Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River is the story of that voyage. As he walks the banks, Schnurr tells us the history of the river, from its formation by glaciers, function in Native American and American history, uses by industry, and role in current economic and environmental issues. Part cultural history, part nature writing, and part narrative, In the Watershed is a lyrical work of non-fiction in the vein of John McPhee and Ian Frazier with a timely and important warning at the core. "What is happening in Lake Erie," Schnurr tells us, "is a disaster by nearly any measure―ecologically, economically, socially, culturally."Heidi Across America: One Woman's Journey on a Bicycle Through the Heartland
Par Heidi Beierle. 2024
A memoir of homecoming – Heidi Across America is a gritty story of how opening our hearts to others enables…
us to open our hearts to ourselves and love what we find there.In the summer of 2010, Heidi Beierle had just finished her first year of graduate studies in community and regional planning and decided to pedal her bicycle solo from her home on the west coast across rural America to the Preserving the Historic Road conference in Washington, D.C. What started as a research trip turned into an intimately physical and psychological encounter with self and nationhood. Heidi was 35 at the time and didn&’t love much about herself except her ability to endure grueling physical undertakings. She viewed her journey as an opportunity to fix her failures and insufficiencies. There were also some research questions she wanted to explore: Why do people live in small towns and what do they like about it? Did a bicyclist like herself bring economic benefit to the small towns she visited? What could communities do to support or invite cyclists to stay in their towns? What could cyclists do to support the communities? Along the way, she was surprised by the kindness of strangers and the emotional pinch of traveling through Wyoming where she grew up. Her journey led her through the Plains and into the Ozarks where the heat climbed to agonizing temperatures and every pedal stroke in the heat felt one closer to death. By the time she completed the trip, Heidi discovered a newfound compassion for herself and a growing love for her country. Strangers opened their hearts to her and in turn, she opened her heart to herself. And her questions began to change and mirror things many Americans are asking themselves today: How can I be okay in my own skin? What does it mean to be enough? How do I satisfy my desire to travel without harming the planet? What does it mean to love America? For many young people, it is a rite of passage to light out on an adventure to see the world and expose themselves to new experiences, but we don&’t often talk about how Americans seeing America can open us to the diversity, awe, and wonder available right here in our nation. Heidi Across America offers a journey to self-love, empathy, consideration for others, and respect for the spirit of place as pathways to find connection and home.In this personal journey, ultra-light backpacker and sought-after speaker Glen Van Peski shares the life lessons he has learned through…
years of lightening his pack and helping others.Adventures provide the richness and texture to a life well lived. So remain open. Keep saying yes to life's opportunities. Glen Van Peski helped revolutionize backpacking by creating ultralight equipment, which allows people to take less so they can do more in the wilderness. During decades of championing ultralight backpacking, Glen became aware that &“take less, do more&” is more than just a hiking slogan. As he reduced his pack weight, he realized that the lessons learned applied to all areas of life. Now he wants to share the lessons he learned to help others live full and vibrant lives—lives characterized by purpose, meaning, and joy. In this book, you will discover transformative life lessons, which may go against the grain of popular thought but have been proven to change lives for the better. You'll learn that: Often the best strategy for achieving goals comes from subtracting rather than adding. When your first instinct is generosity, the long-term dividends will be greater than if you strive to gain your own advantage. Revising the stories you tell yourself about situations will reframe your life and increase gratitude. By investing creatively in relationships, you will generate more joy in your life. Making friends with failure will cause you to grow and improve. take less. do more. It's a revolutionary idea that will transform your life and free your soul to find your purpose—and maybe a little bit of adventure too.Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
Par Blair Braverman. 2016
A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north.By the…
time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to carve out a life as a “tough girl”—a young woman who confronts danger without apology—she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube brilliantly recounts Braverman’s adventures in Norway and Alaska. Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra. Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn’t cut out for life on the frontier. But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear: she was hooked on the North. On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her—and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own. Assured, honest, and lyrical, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube paints a powerful portrait of self-reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police. Through it all, she grapples with love and violence—navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors—as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.Weaving fast-paced adventure writing and ethnographic journalism with elegantly wrought reflections on identity, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of Braverman’s journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.The Wilderness Family
Par Kobie Kruger. 2001
When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of…
the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom. Yet, for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years spent in this spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical - and occasionally the most hair-raising - of their lives.Kobie recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences in this vast reserve - a place where, bathed in golden sunlight, hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River, storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats hung in the sausage trees.But as the Krugers settled in, they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. They soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected: the sneaky hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots, the sinister-looking pythons that slithered into the house, and the usually placid elephants who grew foul-tempered in the violent heat of the summer. And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him.Yet nothing prepared the Krugers for their greatest adventure of all, the raising of an orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him, was only a few days old and on the verge of death. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious and adored member of the fmaily. It is the rearing of this young king, and the hilarious endeavours to teach him to become a 'real' lion who could survive with his own kind in the wild, that lie at the heart of this endearing memoir. It is a memoir of a magical place and time that can never be recaptured.Extraordinary People: A Semi-Comprehensive Guide to Some of the World's Most Fascinating Individuals
Par Michael Hearst. 2015
Inside this book, you'll find stories of 50 extraordinary people such as:Evel Knievel, who jumped his motorcycle over 14 Greyhound…
busesThe Iceman, the most well-preserved human, found in the ice after 5,300 yearsSam Patch, who jumped Niagara Falls for $75Helen Thayer, who walked to the North Pole aloneRoy Sullivan, who was struck by lightning 7 timesThese intriguing facts and hundreds more await curious readers, amateur historians, and anyone who aspires to the altogether extraordinary!To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration
Par Edward J. Larson. 2018
Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a "suspenseful" (WSJ) and "adrenaline-fueled" (Outside) entwined narrative of…
the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world. As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration—set at the world’s frozen extremes—lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called “Third Pole,” the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.In the course of one extraordinary year, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson were hailed worldwide at the discovers of the North Pole; Britain’s Ernest Shackleton had set a new geographic “Furthest South” record, while his expedition mate, Australian Douglas Mawson, had reached the Magnetic South Pole; and at the roof of the world, Italy’s Duke of the Abruzzi had attained an altitude record that would stand for a generation, the result of the first major mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram, where the daring aristocrat attempted K2 and established the standard route up the most notorious mountain on the planet. Based on extensive archival and on-the-ground research, Edward J. Larson weaves these narratives into one thrilling adventure story. Larson, author of the acclaimed polar history Empire of Ice, draws on his own voyages to the Himalaya, the arctic, and the ice sheets of the Antarctic, where he himself reached the South Pole and lived in Shackleton’s Cape Royds hut as a fellow in the National Science Foundations’ Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. These three legendary expeditions, overlapping in time, danger, and stakes, were glorified upon their return, their leaders celebrated as the preeminent heroes of their day. Stripping away the myth, Larson, a master historian, illuminates one of the great, overlooked tales of exploration, revealing the extraordinary human achievement at the heart of these journeys.In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky, a foremost science writer and recipient of a MacArthur…
Genius Grant, tells the mesmerizing story of his twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of savanna baboons."I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla,&” writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist&’s coming-of-age in Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky&’s twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate&’s Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti—for man and beast alike. Over two decades, Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes enamored of his subjects—unique and compelling characters in their own right—and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him. By turns hilarious and poignant, A Primate&’s Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers.South: The Endurance Expedition (Penguin Modern Classics)
Par Ernest Shackleton. 2002
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was perhaps the most ambitious, elaborate and confident of all the British attempts to master the…
South Pole. Like the others it ended in disaster, with the Endeavour first trapped and then crushed to pieces in the ice and its crew trapped in the Antarctic, seemingly doomed to a slow and horrible death. In the face of extraordinary odds, Shackleton, the expedition's leader, decided on the only course that might just save them: a 700 nautical mile voyage in a small boat across the ferocious Southern Ocean in the forelorn hope of reaching the only human habitation within range: a small whaling station on the rugged, ice-sheeted island of South Georgia.South tells the story both of the whole astonishing expedition and of Shackleton's journey to rescue his men - one of the greatest feats of navigation ever recorded.One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the…
time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the 'new continent'. The first to draw and speculate on Aztec art, to observe reverse polarity in magnetism and to discover why America is called America, his writings profoundly influenced the course of Victorian culture, causing Darwin to reflect: 'He alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics'.A New Voyage Round the World
Par William Dampier. 2020
'A roaring tale ... remains as vivid and exciting today as it was on publication in 1697' GuardianThe pirate and…
adventurer William Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times, and took notes wherever he went. This is his frank, vivid account of his buccaneering sea voyages around the world, from the Caribbean to the Pacific and East Indies. Filled with accounts of raids, escapes, wrecks and storms, it also contains precise observations of people, places, animals and food (including the first English accounts of guacamole, mango chutney and chopsticks). A bestseller on publication, this unique record of the colonial age influenced Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and consequently the whole of English literature.Edited with an Introduction by Nicholas ThomasTo the Greatest Heights: Facing Danger, Finding Humility, and Climbing a Mountain of Truth
Par Vanessa O'Brien. 2021
This riveting and uplifting memoir by Vanessa O&’Brien, record-breaking American-British explorer, takes you on an unexpected journey to the top…
of the world&’s highest mountains. Long before she became the first American woman to summit K2 and the first British woman to return from its summit alive, Vanessa O&’Brien was a feisty suburban Detroit teenager forced to reinvent her world in the wake of a devastating loss that destroyed her family.Making her own way in the world, Vanessa strove to reach her lofty ambitions. Soon, armed with an MBA and a wry sense of humor, she climbed the corporate ladder to great success, but after the 2009 economic meltdown, her career went into a tailspin. She searched for a new purpose and settled on an unlikely goal: climbing Mount Everest. When her first attempt ended in disaster, she trudged home, humbled but wiser. Two years later, she made it to the top of the world. And then she kept going.Grounded by a cadre of wise-cracking friends and an inimitable British spouse, Vanessa held her own in the intensely competitive world of mountaineering, summiting the highest peak on every continent, and skiing the last degree to the North and South Poles. She set new speed records for the Seven Summits, receiving a Guinness World Record and the Explorers Grand Slam, and finally made peace with her traumatic past. During her attempt on K2, she very nearly gave up. But on the &“savage mountain,&” which kills one out of every four climbers who summit, Vanessa evolved from an adventurer out to challenge herself to an explorer with a high-altitude perspective on a changing world—and a new call to share her knowledge and passion across the globe.Told with heart and humor, Vanessa&’s journey from suburban Detroit to Everest&’s Death Zone to the summit of K2 and beyond, is a transformative story of resilience, higher purpose, and the courage to overcome any obstacle.Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
Par Andrea Pitzer. 2021
In the bestselling tradition of Hampton Sides&’s In the Kingdom of Ice, a &“gripping adventure tale&” (The Boston Globe) recounting…
Dutch polar explorer William Barents&’ three harrowing Arctic expeditions—the last of which resulted in a relentlessly challenging year-long fight for survival.The human story has always been one of perseverance—often against remarkable odds. The most astonishing survival tale of all might be that of 16th-century Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew of sixteen, who ventured farther north than any Europeans before and, on their third polar exploration, lost their ship off the frozen coast of Nova Zembla to unforgiving ice. The men would spend the next year fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing hunger, and endless winter.In Icebound, Andrea Pitzer masterfully combines a gripping tale of survival with a sweeping history of the great Age of Exploration—a time of hope, adventure, and seemingly unlimited geographic frontiers. At the story&’s center is William Barents, one of the 16th century&’s greatest navigators whose larger-than-life ambitions and obsessive quest to chart a path through the deepest, most remote regions of the Arctic ended in both tragedy and glory. Journalist Pitzer did extensive research, learning how to use four-hundred-year-old navigation equipment, setting out on three Arctic expeditions to retrace Barents&’s steps, and visiting replicas of Barents&’s ship and cabin.&“A resonant meditation on human ingenuity, resilience, and hope&” (The New Yorker), Pitzer&’s reenactment of Barents&’s ill-fated journey shows us how the human body can function at twenty degrees below, the history of mutiny, the art of celestial navigation, and the intricacies of building shelters. But above all, it gives us a firsthand glimpse into the true nature of courage.The Mountain: My Time on Everest
Par Ed Viesturs, David Roberts. 2013
In national bestseller The Mountain, world-renowned climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs and cowriter David Roberts paint a vivid portrait…
of obsession, dedication, and human achievement in a true love letter to the world’s highest peak.In The Mountain, veteran world-class climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs—the only American to have climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks—trains his sights on Mount Everest in richly detailed accounts of expeditions that are by turns personal, harrowing, deadly, and inspiring.The highest mountain on earth, Everest remains the ultimate goal for serious high-altitude climbers. Viesturs has gone on eleven expeditions to Everest, spending more than two years of his life on the mountain and reaching the summit seven times. No climber today is better poised to survey Everest’s various ascents—both personal and historic. Viesturs sheds light on the fate of Mallory and Irvine, whose 1924 disappearance just 800 feet from the summit remains one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries, as well as the multiply tragic last days of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer in 1996, the stuff of which Into Thin Air was made.Informed by the experience of one who has truly been there, The Mountain affords a rare glimpse into that place on earth where Heraclitus’s maxim—“Character is destiny”—is proved time and again.