When you stand on the summit of Mount Everest, the sky is an inverted blue bowl above you, and the Himalayan peaks are a carpet at your feet. The sun in the snow is bright enough to blind you, even as your body begins to suffocate too thin to sustain human life. I know that not because I’ve been there myself, but because I’ve read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and other books about the highest mountain in the world.
Krakauer survived a terrible tragedy on Everest—a high price to pay for a remarkable book. But thanks to the alchemy of his sharp, clear writing, Into Thin Air can truly embody the experience for readers, even those who may never travel there. The luster of this magic trick has not yet faded, and my favorite place to encounter it is in the story of the most terrifying events. Stakes of life and death? Dangerous secrets? Motley Fool pitting themselves against impossible odds? Sign me up – but only transparently, please. I love my adventures paired with a cup of tea and my softest blanket.
Many readers, even those like me, are drawn to adventure and survival stories, stories of cross-country marathons and extraordinary journeys to far-flung places—travel stories about ordinary people trying extraordinary things. Here are seven books that I promise will inspire you with some of the wildest scenes of the planet and the greatest human endeavors, even if read in complete comfort.
Patienceand Alfred Lansing
I’ve read many books about the suffering endured by European explorers of the 19th and early 20th centuries who, trying to reach the North and South Poles, skied and starved and (sometimes) slept through vast ice fields. So I feel qualified to say: If you only read one book about a frozen journey gone awry, do it. PatienceLansing’s thrilling, gripping, and meticulously researched account of Ernest Shackleton’s incredible 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton and his crew were interested in making the first full expedition to Antarctica. But their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in sea ice before they even reached shore, and began a months-long struggle for survival—first on their doomed ship, and then floating on a series of icebergs after it collapsed. Lansing, an American journalist, interviewed several survivors in the 1950s and consulted diaries and other documents. Each carefully chosen element brings to life the plight of sailors on the ice, the life of toe-tapping, and stomach-churning, and the result is thrilling.
And Alfred Lansing
Walk in the Parkand Kevin Fedarko
Fedarko’s head is, perhaps, nodding Walking in the ForestBill Bryson’s well-known memoir of hiking the Appalachian Trail, and the author initially takes a similarly unprepared route for his long walk: With a photographer joining him, he hopes to hike the entire length of the Grand Canyon, piecing together a difficult trail between rim and river. But the dangers in Southwest canyon country are greater than those of a New England summer. Fedarko, a former Colorado River raft guide, must enlist an impressive array of veteran local riders and trekkers to help see his party through potentially deadly dangers: navigational challenges, extreme heat, rare and unpredictable water sources, and rock faces. This big commitment seems, at times, like a fool’s errand. But as Fedarko progresses, his deep knowledge of, and love for, the area comes through powerfully, and his vivid writing makes even the worst parts of the journey sound at least convincing.
Beachand Jonathan Raban
In BeachRaban recounts his solo journey, in a boat, around the British Isles. “Home is always the hardest place to get into a sharp direction,” he writes; so, in his 40s, he hopes that floating out to sea will give him a clearer view of the nation that raised him. The England seen from the water is “a gloomy house, its shutters drawn, its eaves dripping”—but it is not the only character in Raban’s narrative. The sea itself becomes a friend, as does the treacherous coast and many people Raban meets on land along the way. Beach It’s partly a brilliant work of original writing, partly the unsettling memoir of an Englishman, and perhaps most of all a grainy portrait of the Thatcher years. At one point, he arrives at the port to learn that war has broken out in the Falkland Islands; the appalling absurdity and ignorance surrounding the conflict is the target of his acid analysis throughout the journey. As Colin Thubron wrote about Beach in Times of London 40 years ago: “That poetry is not sad.”
Hope Dividedand Alyssa Cole
Cole’s suspenseful and gripping novel is a historical romance and a thrilling story of two people on the run for their lives. During the American Civil War, Marlie, the daughter of a formerly enslaved Black woman and a wealthy white man, is part of a network of Black Americans who spy, undermine, and oppose the Confederacy from within the South. He uses the relative freedom given to him by his father’s family to do what he can for the Confederacy, including sheltering a white Confederate soldier, Ewan McCall, who escaped from a prisoner of war camp. Soon, Marlie and Ewan are forced to run away together. Hunted by a sadistic Union officer, knowing that capture will mean torture and death, they follow the Underground Railroad through the Carolina wilds. They have to choose who to trust, in white communities and among the hidden pockets of Black runaways who help them along the way; above all, they should know who they are. Cole’s novel is based on the real, little-known history of Black resistance to the Confederacy, and it’s also a fascinating adventure.
In the Heart of the Seaand Nathaniel Philbrick
In 1820, an American whaling ship was attacked by a whale—an incident that turned out to be so tragic, it helped inspire Herman Melville. Moby-Dick. In the Heart of the Sea is Philbrick’s National Book Award–winning nonfiction account of the disaster and the crew’s struggle to get home. As exciting as Lansing’s treatment of Shackleton’s Antarctic life is, Philbrick’s story of Essex is more like a horror story. First, the men are threatened by a large, angry sperm whale (scary, as in to some extent the reader can’t help but stop it against the knives), which runs away and eventually sinks their boat. The survivors, floating on the open sea, are then burdened by hunger and thirst, by the various dangers of the Pacific, and finally by another person. This is life offered at its rawest, rawest, most gut-wrenching form.
The sun is the Compassand Caroline Van Hemert
Some of the extreme events described in the books on this list were not optional; their protagonists were forced into do-or-die journeys by circumstance or misfortune. Not so for Alaskan wildlife biologist Caroline Van Hemert, who, disillusioned with life in the lab, tried to rekindle her love for her farm through a daring and physical journey from coastal Washington to the Arctic. Van Hemert and her husband traveled 4,000 miles under their own power—first in locally made rowboats through the wet, rocky Inside Passage, which connects the Pacific Northwest to the Gulf of Alaska, and then through a combination of skiing, boating, hiking, and kayaking in the interior of the Yukon and Alaska. By implication, Van Hemert chose a path that follows the northern migration of birds, the creatures that first inspired his love of science and the wilderness. His time in the wild is dangerous and demanding, but it brings back something important in him—and his book may also leave readers changed.
The Lost City of Zby David Grann
Percy Fawcett, the protagonist of Grann’s epic tale, was a British detective who mysteriously disappeared with his son in 1925, while they were hunting a mythical Amazonian city. As Grann begins to recreate Fawcett’s travels on the page, a long time. The New Yorker a staff writer also falls prey to Fawcett’s madness. He travels to South America himself, looking for clues about the mystery of the city and its seekers. As a result, this book deals with two parallels, connected for a century: that of the subject and that of the author. Grann doesn’t find everything she’s looking for, but she uncovers new evidence about what may have happened to Fawcett—and her book reveals why this supposedly non-existent civilization was so compelling to the men who sought it out.
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