I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson

Double Take

Kevin Michael Connolly

Double takeA rapid or surprised second look, either literal or figurative, at a person or situation whose significance has not been completely grasped at first.Kevin Michael Connolly is a twenty-three-year-old man who has seen the world in a way most of us never will. Whether swarmed by Japanese tourists at Epcot Center as a child or holding court at the X Games on his mono-ski, Kevin Connolly has

Dove

Robin Lee Graham, Derek L.T. Gill · 199 pages

Setting out in his sloop Dove to encircle the globe, a sixteen-year-old boy finds adventure and romance.

Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival

Yossi Ghinsberg · 320 pages

West with the Night

Beryl Markham · 293 pages

West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.

Farthest North

Fridtjof Nansen · 544 pages

Facing Up: A Remarkable Journey to the Summit of Mount Everest

Bear Grylls · 304 pages

Only one in four people who attempt Everest are successful, and of those few the majority are over 30. Bear Grylls overcame the extreme weather conditions and months of limited sleep, and reached the summit at the age of 23, becoming the youngest British climber to scale Mount Everest.

Sailing Alone Around The World

Joshua Slocum · 294 pages

Joshua Slocum, one of the most famous of American sea captains, really was the first to single-handedly circumnavigate the world. The epitome of Yankee independence, he had risen from a seaman to the captain of his own ship. Marooned in Brazil, he built a "canoe" in which he returned to America (see The Voyage of the Liberdade). At loose ends at fifty-one, he was offered an old oyster boat which h

A Pirate Looks at Fifty

Jimmy Buffett · 420 pages

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot

High Adventure: The True Story of the First Ascent of Everest

Edmund Hillary · 245 pages

You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures

Alan Cumming · 267 pages

"A magical concoction of the mischievous, tender, whimsical, and debauched real-life adventures of Alan Cumming, told in his own words and pictures... In these forty-five picture essays, Cumming recounts his real-life adventures (and often, misadventures), illustrated by his own equally entertaining photographs. From an awkward bonding session with Elizabeth Taylor to poignant stories about his fa

The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind and Almost Found Myself on the Pacific Crest Trail

Dan White · 384 pages

The Pacific Crest Trail stretches from Mexico to Canada, a distance of 2,650 grueling, sun-scorched, bear-infested miles. When Dan White and his girlfriend announced their intention to hike it, Dan's parents—among others—thought they were nuts. How could two people who'd never even shared an apartment together survive six months in the desert with little more than a two-person tent and some trail

American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China

Matthew Polly · 359 pages

Growing up a ninety-pound weakling tormented by bullies, Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become a fighter like in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu. Later, Matthew decided to pursue this quixotic dream: he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism. Expecting to find a

Iron and Silk

Mark Salzman · 211 pages

An American describes his experiences after his arrival in Hunan Province in 1982 to teach English, including wushu training and life in post-Mao China.

Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes

Rosie Swale Pope · 336 pages

After her husband died of cancer, 57-year-old Rosie set off to run around the world, raising money in memory of the man she loved. Followed by wolves, knocked down by a bus, confronted by bears, chased by a naked man with a gun and stranded with severe frostbite, Rosie's breathtaking 20,000-mile solo journey is as gripping as it is inspiring.Rosie's solo run around the world started out of sorrow

Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian trail

Bill Walker · 246 pages

Uganda Be Kidding Me

Chelsea Handler · 257 pages

In this uproarious collection, the author answers the most frequently asked traveler's questions, hot travel trips, and travel etiquette, none of which should be believed. Wherever she travels, one thing is certain: she always ends up in the land of the ridiculous. Now, in this uproarious collection, she sneaks her sharp wit through airport security and delivers her most absurd and hilarious stori

South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914 - 1917

Ernest Shackleton · 375 pages

In 1911 Roald Amundsen beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole, and Scott and his colleagues all died on the return journey. Ernest Shackleton, who had served with Scott on a previous expedition, decided that crossing Antarctica from sea to sea was the last great unattempted journey on the continent. His Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17 was a failure. But perhaps because it failed

The Gringo

J. Grigsby Crawford · 225 pages

"Within weeks of arriving as a volunteer in a remote corner of South America, Crawford got a lot more than he bargained for: a narrow escape from a kidnapping plot hatched by the people he was sent there to help. Then things only got stranger. In his quest to find adventure, Crawford undertook a savage journey of danger, drugs, sex, and alarming illness. What resulted is The Gringo: one part liter

No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering

Clara Bensen · 320 pages

The Yellow Envelope: One Gift, Three Rules, and a Life-Changing Journey Around the World

Kim Dinan · 368 pages

Hikertrash: Life on the Pacific Crest Trail

Erin Miller · 320 pages

Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

Conor Grennan · 308 pages

Little Princes is the epic story of Conor Grennan’s battle to save the lost children of Nepal and how he found himself in the process. Part Three Cups of Tea, part Into Thin Air, Grennan’s remarkable memoir is at once gripping and inspirational, and it carries us deep into an exotic world that most readers know little about.

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s

Cornelia Otis Skinner, Emily Kimbrough · 247 pages

Two ingenues "do the Continent" pre-WWII. Skinner takes us from the innocence of youth in the 1920s to the dawn of WWII, replete with all the faux pas and fiascoes you would expect from youth taking Europe on their own in the early part of the twentieth century when innocence still existed and innuendo was unheard of. A great read.