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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorInto the Wild
Jon Krakauer · 207 pages
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
Michael Finkel · 203 pages
"For readers of Jon Krakauer and The Lost City of Z, a remarkable tale of survival and solitude--the true story of a man who lived alone in a tent in the Maine woods, never talking to another person and surviving by stealing supplies from nearby cabins for twenty-seven years. In 1986, twenty-year-old Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the woods.
Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
Ben Montgomery · 282 pages
"Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangst
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
Wallace Stegner · 438 pages
Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer
David Roberts · 394 pages
Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts, with a foreword by Jon Krakauer, is the definitive biography of the artist, writer, and eloquent celebrator of the wilderness whose bold solo explorations of the American West and mysterious disappearance in the Utah desert at age 20 have earned him a large and devoted cult following. More than 75 years after his vanishing, Ruess stirs the kinds of passion a
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
Linda Lear · 608 pages
Beatrix Potter's books are adored by millions, but they were just one aspect of an extraordinary life. This captivating biography brings us the passionate, unconventional woman behind the beloved stories: a gifted artist and shrewd businesswoman; a pioneering scientific researcher; a powerful landowner who conserved acres of Lakeland countryside; a daughter who defied her parents with her first tr
Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island
Will Harlan · 313 pages
"A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol [Ruckdeschel] is a self-taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia ... In recent years, Carnegie heirs and the National Park Service have clashed with Carol over the island's future. What happens when a dirt-poor naturalist with only a high-school dip
The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska's Arctic Wilderness
James Campbell · 311 pages
A portrait of the late Alaskan bush frontiersman, told by his cousin, traces his family's adventures on the land's frozen and remote outreaches, describing his unhappy childhood, decision to move his wife and two daughters to the bush, steadfast cultivation of survival skills, and untimely death.
John James Audubon
Richard Rhodes · 521 pages
"From the historian Richard Rhodes, the first major biography of John James Audubon in forty years, and the first to illuminate fully the private and family life of the master illustrator of the natural world." "Rhodes shows us young Audubon arriving in New York from France in 1803, his illegitimacy a painful secret, speaking no English but already drawing and observing birds. We see him falling i
The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic
Michael Sims · 307 pages
As he was composing what was to become his most enduring book, E. B. White was obeying the maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats--White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. Painfully shy his entire life, "this boy," White once wrote of himself, "felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people."
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Andrea Wulf · 484 pages
From the Prologue... When nature is perceived as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious. Everything hangs together. If one thread is pulled, the whole tapestry may unravel. After he saw the devastating environmental effects of colonial plantations at Lake Valencia in Venezuela in 1800, Humboldt became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change. Deforestation t
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
Douglas Brinkley · 940 pages
In this groundbreaking epic biography, Douglas Brinkley draws on never-before-published materials to examine the life and achievements of our "naturalist president." By setting aside more than 230 million acres of wild America for posterity between 1901 and 1909, Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a universal endeavor. This crusade for the American wilderness was perhaps the greatest U.S. presid
On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring
William Souder · 496 pages
Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds
Olivia Gentile · 352 pages
All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West
David Gessner · 354 pages
"Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, ... nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches National Park in Utah, braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the liv
The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon
Jacqueline Davies · 32 pages
As a boy, John James Audubon loved to watch birds. In 1804, at the age of eighteen, he moved from his home in France to Pennsylvania. There he took a particular interest in peewee flycatchers. While observing these birds, John James became determined to answer a pair of two-thousand-year-old questions: Where do small birds go in the winter, and do they return to the same nest in the spring?
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Tom Reiss · 430 pages
“In the early 1800s, General Alex Dumas was purposefully disappeared by hie enemies. And though his son sought to make him live through his classic novels, for too long his story has remained silenced. The Black Count vividly vindicates the great general, restoring him to his rightful place at the center of the Age of Revolution.
Rising from the Plains
John McPhee · 213 pages
Bestselling author McPhee takes us on another exciting geological excursion with this engaging account of life--past and present--in the high plains of Wyoming.
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
Candice Millard · 440 pages
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.The River of Doubt--it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its
The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet
Jim Robbins · 236 pages
Describes the efforts of a former alcoholic nurseryman, whose near-death experience prompted him to attempt to find the best specimens of the U.S.'s 872 known species of trees and use them to propagate their offspring around the world.
Michael Jordan: The Life
Roland Lazenby · 708 pages
Traces the life of one of the most legendary basketball players in the history of the sport, drawing upon interviews with Jordan's friends, family, and teammates, and following his career from college to the NBA.
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan · 450 pages
What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as
Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier
Stephen E. Ambrose · 521 pages
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact wit