Adventure Writing

Entertainment Weekly calls acclaimed author and essayist J. Maarten Troost a "funny, candid, and down-to-earth travel companion". Both witty and poignant, Headhunters on My Doorstep follows Troost as he retraces Robert Louis Stevenson’s path through the South Pacific. Somewhere between AA meetings in Tahiti and discovering how the Island of Merrymaking got its name, Troost reconnects with himself, his family, and the beauty of life.

Like so many others, David Lebovitz dreamed about living in Paris ever since he first visited the city in the 1980s. Finally, after a nearly two-decade career as a pastry chef and cookbook author, he moved to Paris to start a new life. Having crammed all his worldly belongings into three suitcases, he arrived, hopes high, at his new apartment in the lively Bastille neighborhood.

When Stephen Bodio was a young boy in the early '50s, he saw an image in National Geographic that became forever etched in his mind: It was a photograph of a Kazakh nomad, dressed in a long coat and wearing a fur hat, holding a huge tame eagle on his fist. And a lifelong fascination with Central Asia was born.

Lin and Larry Pardey's first book, Cruising in Seraffyn, is credited with launching 50,000 dreams. This third book in the critically-acclaimed Seraffyn series chronicles their three years spent exploring Ulysses' wine-colored sea.

A gonzo ride through war-torn Yemen as only Chas Smith, the award-winning author of Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell and Cocaine + Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing's Greatest Love Affair, could provide. Follow Smith and his misfit band of merrymakers as they search for the true origins of Al Qaeda and endeavor to ride the unsurfed waves of Yemen all while exploring the slim opportunities for fun in the margins of our global war on terror and at any cost - even if it means eventual kidnapping by Hezbollah.

Told with sincerity, humor, and wit, Trespassing Across America is both a fascinating account of one man's remarkable journey along the Keystone XL pipeline and a meditation on climate change, the beauty of the natural world, and the extremes to which we can push ourselves - both physically and mentally.

What secrets do the Las Vegas storm drains keep? What discoveries wait in the dark? What's beneath the neon? Armed with a flashlight, tape recorder, and expandable baton, Las Vegas CityLife writer-editor Matthew O'Brien explored the Las Vegas flood-control system for more than four years. Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas chronicles O'Brien's adventures in subterranean Vegas. He follows the footsteps of a psycho killer. He braces against a flood. He parties with naked crack-heads.

Ever since I cycled down the west coast of Canada and the United States as a means of saving the bus fare on a round-the-world trip, I dreamed of cycling the whole length of that landmass, from the southern tip of South America all the way up to the Arctic Ocean. Returning home to a job I didn’t enjoy, that dream burned at my mind until, as a mature student in 1999, I was given the opportunity to take a year out and decided now was my time.

The North Pole, originally published in 1910, makes available Robert E. Peary's own account of his expedition in the Arctic. It provides hotly contested evidence that remains an indispensable key in deciding who deserved the coveted title "Discoverer of the North Pole". It is also a gripping adventure story that is impossible to put down.

I Wouldn't Start From Here is Andrew Mueller's personal memoir of the 21st century so far. It features any number of exotic locations, and a cast of revolutionaries, rock stars, politicians, hitmen, warmongers and peacemakers. Between ducking for cover in Gaza, running roadblocks in Iraq, getting arrested in Cameroon and hanging out with Hezbollah, this is a search for an answer to perhaps the key question of our time: "What is it with these people?"

Charley Boorman is back on his bike exploring the world's second-largest country - home to some of the most stunning and challenging terrain known to man. Canada is a country of extremes, and Charley knows all about pushing the limits. He goes dirt biking in New Brunswick, dives through old shipwrecks in Tobermory and rides along Butch Cassidy's old Outlaw Trail. He also meets a fascinating mix of people on his journey.

This charming account of the voyage of two men in a small boat half way round the world from Plymouth to New Zealand in 1953 is a rare insight into a time, not long ago, when sailors had no GPS, electronics, radio or any of the mod cons that we take for granted today. Without lifejacket or a life raft, they 'just took what came along', hand steering all the way, navigating by sextant, hand-cranking their engine and using oil lamps for light at night and for navigation. Sailors will be staggered how primitive conditions were only a few decades ago, even though it was the norm at the time.

The great unknown of the Southwest is conquered by a one-armed man and his crew of adventurers, placing the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon on the map of the American continent. It is a journey no human being had ever made before. Dangerous rapids, narrow canyon walls offering no escape, terrifying river waterfalls, capsized boats, near drowning, lost equipment and disillusioned men are dramatically described by John Wesley Powell, leader of this adventurous party.

For anyone who ever wanted to be an archaeologist, Ian Graham could be a hero. This lively memoir chronicles Graham's career as the "last explorer" and a fierce advocate for the protection and preservation of Maya sites and monuments across Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. It is also full of adventure and high society, for the self-deprecating Graham traveled to remote lands such as Afghanistan in wonderful company.

Jeff Alt takes you along every step of his 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail adventure. This entertaining journey includes bears, bugs, blisters, captivating characters, skunk bedmates, and hilarious food cravings. Alt walked more than five million steps in tribute to his brother, who has cerebral palsy and lives in a home called Sunshine. This trail adventure has inspired an annual event that has raised more than $200,000 for Sunshine. It includes hiking tips for the whole family.

Sailing by yourself, out of sight of land, can be invigorating and terrifying, compelling and tedious—and sometimes all of the above in one morning. But it is also a wide expanse of time in which to think. Sailing Alone tells the story of some of the remarkable people who, over the last four centuries, have spent weeks and months, moving slowly over the world's largest laboratory: a capricious and startling place in which to observe oneself, the weather, the stars, and countless sea creatures, from the tiniest to the most massive and threatening.

Within six months Barbara Schoichet lost everything: her job, her girlfriend of six years, and her mother to pancreatic cancer. Her life stripped bare, and armed with nothing but a death wish and a ton of attitude, Barbara pursues an unlikely method of coping. At the age of 50, she earns her motorcycle license, buys a Harley on eBay from two guys named Dave, and drives it alone from New York to Los Angeles on a circuitous trek loosely guided by her H.O.G. tour book and a whole lot of road whimsy.

This is the riveting true story of a young man’s solo bicycle odyssey: freezing in the Anatolian mountains of Turkey, confounded by butterflies in the empty Iranian desert, passing through the rubble of a coup in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and surviving dire illness in Pakistan's Indus valley. His journey ends in the heart of the subcontinent, having glimpsed true freedom. This is an account of humankind’s essential goodness, of trusting unseen hands that can steer us from disaster, and of learning that the way out is through.

In 1976, after graduating from Harvard College, Mike Jacker embarked on a year-long voyage aboard Rhiannon with two friends named Louis and Clark. The three Midwestern boys had never experienced ocean sailing. Mike's captivating narrative takes you along on his remarkable adventures at sea and on land.

In 1958, while flying from one island to another, Audrey Sutherland sees the remote and roadless northeast side of Molokai, with its spectacular sea cliffs and waterfalls. Always an adventurer, she decides that she must find a way to explore this then inaccessible area. After much study, she determines that the best way for her to navigate these treacherous sea walls is to swim while towing an inflatable kayak. This is the story of fulfilling her dream, of planning then implementing, of launching and advancing, of retreating and reconnoitering, of challenge and success.