Adventure Biography

Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks the pivotal point at which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. The novel chronicles the misadventures of two seamen who at first seem different but are really two sides of the same coin: 27-year-old Wesley Martin, who “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love,” and William Everhart, an assistant professor of English at Columbia College.

Billy Connolly may be a citizen of the world, but in his heart he's never been far from his homeland. Made in Scotland is Billy's unique and intimate portrait of his native Scotland, a love letter to the places and people that made him. It's an adventure inspired by a single incident: the moment Billy received his Knighthood and was asked, 'How does it feel to have achieved all this when you came from nothing?' His response was, 'But I did come from something!'

When Dr. Sanjay Gupta travels the world for CNN to report on natural disasters, conflicts, and catastrophes, he illuminates the stories of the affected and the afflicted. But a few times in his career, while reporting abroad, he’s been asked to don his surgeon’s cap and gloves to intervene in high-stakes medical emergencies. Far from his controlled and highly regulated operating rooms, Gupta found himself trying to save lives in the most makeshift and trying conditions.

In this follow-up to Clanlands Sam & Graham document their journey across New Zealand, a country Graham calls home and that Sam has longed to visit since learning it was a popular destination for Scottish immigrants to settle back in the 19th century. Follow the 'outlandish' pair as they explore the Scottish influence of New Zealand: connecting with the rich culture and Scottish heritage, sampling world-class food & drink, and being humbled by incredible landscapes and pulse-raising activities.

The shocking, never-before-told story of the bizarre world inside the legendary Playboy Mansion - and finally the secret truth about the man who holds the key - from one of the few people who truly knows: Hef's former number-one girlfriend and star of The Girls Next Door.

For centuries, India has enthralled Westerners looking for an exotic getaway, a brief immersion in yoga and meditation, or, in rare cases, a true pilgrimage to find spiritual revelation. Justin Alexander Shetler, an inveterate traveler trained in wilderness survival, was one such seeker.

Self-made billionaire Sam Zell consistently sees what others don't. From finding a market for overpriced Playboy magazines among his junior high classmates, to buying real estate on the cheap after a market crash, to investing in often unglamorous industries with long-term value, Zell acts boldly on supply and demand trends to grab the first-mover advantage. And he can find opportunity virtually anywhere - from an arcane piece of legislation to a desert meeting in Abu Dhabi.

Traverspine is not a place you will find on most maps. A century ago, it stood near the foothills of the remote Mealy Mountains in central Labrador. Today it is an abandoned ghost town, almost all trace of it swallowed up by dark spruce woods that cloak millions of acres. In the early 1900s, this isolated little settlement was the scene of an extraordinary haunting by large creatures none could identify. Strange tracks were found in the woods. Unearthly cries were heard in the night. Sled dogs went missing.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner, Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed West Face of the remote 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1985. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead. For three days he wrestled with guilt as they prepared to return home. Then a cry in the night took them out with torches, where they found Joe, badly injured.

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" So goes the signature introduction of New York Herald star journalist Henry Morton Stanley to renowned explorer Dr. David Livingstone, who had been missing for six years in the wilds of Africa. Into Africa ushers us into the meeting of these remarkable men. In 1866, when Livingstone journeyed into the heart of the African continent in search of the Nile's source, the land was rough, unknown to Europeans, and inhabited by man-eating tribes.

What does it take to be one of the world's best high-altitude mountain climbers? A lot of fundraising; traveling in some of the world's most dangerous countries; enduring cold bivouacs, searing lungs, and a cloudy mind when you can least afford one. It means learning the hard lessons the mountains teach. Steve House built his reputation on ascents throughout the Alps, Canada, Alaska, the Karakoram, and the Himalaya that have expanded possibilities of style, speed, and difficulty.

Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navy's HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit knowledge in 2014.

For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon - a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it.

The Color of Everything is a thrilling tale of risk and adventure, written by a man who has done it all: he’s stood at the top of the world, climbed imposing mountain faces alone in the dark and become the only American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter. But it is also the story of a tumultuous life--a stirring, lyrical memoir that captures the profound musings of a brilliant and unquiet mind grappling with the meaning of success, the cost of fame, addiction, and whether it is possible to outrun your demons.

Faced with buying a car and getting a real job - or taking the money and blowing it on a six-month adventure around Asia...well, there really is no contest! Who wouldn't want to visit exotic places, like Borneo, Cambodia, and China? Who wouldn't want to tackle the world's most dangerous hiking path, tangle with the Vietnamese Mafia, and suffer days in the dreaded Mongolian saddle? And who wouldn't want to try five-organ soup? All he has to do is survive long enough to realize his dreams.

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.

Always Looking Up is a memoir of Michael's past decade, told through the critical themes of his life: work, politics, faith, and family. The book is a journey of self-discovery and reinvention, and a testament to the consolations that protect him from the ravages of Parkinson's. With the humor and wit that captivated fans in his first book, Lucky Man, Michael describes how he became a happier, more satisfied person by recognizing the gifts of everyday life.

Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her lifestyle as a society woman.

This is the remarkable story of the English language; from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. The Adventure of English is not only an enthralling story of power, religion, and trade, but also the story of people, and how their lives continue to change the extraordinary language that is English.

At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions.” It’s not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, “to distinguish matters of consequence from matters of inconsequence.” He leaves it to his listeners to do the final sort of which is which.