Explorer Memoirs

For Allena Hansen, a vicious bear attack was "no biggie" compared to the trauma inflicted by her refined '60s upbringing, her stint as Playboy's token intellectual bimbo, and her cowgirl angst, which is enough to knock even Job for a loop.

Ranulph Fiennes has travelled to the most dangerous and inaccessible places on earth, almost died countless times, lost nearly half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity, and been awarded a polar medal and an OBE. He has been an elite soldier, an athlete, a mountaineer, an explorer, a bestselling author, and nearly replaced Sean Connery as James Bond.

En 1972, partió de Montevideo, con destino a Santiago de Chile, un avión Fairchild Hiller FH-227 de las fuerzas aéreas uruguayas en el que viajaba el equipo de rugby Old Christians y sus acompañantes. Sin embargo, les aguardaba un destino muy distinto del que habían proyectado. Las infernales condiciones climatológicas determinaron la catástrofe y el aparato se estrelló con los Andes.

When Kathy decides to leave her abusive marriage, she is 59 years old. She’s unprepared to live on a reduced income when her estranged husband hides his assets from the court. She’s shocked by the cost of rentals in Southern California. She didn’t realize how impossible it would be to land a job at her age and after being out of the market for two decades while she raised her kids. She hasn’t anticipated that her nearly grown children would be mad at her for finally standing up for herself.

A deeply personal travel memoir that combines alpine adventure, family connections, and spiritual encounters in two very different worlds: a Himalayan village and Vancouver, Canada. In 2012, Michael Schauch and his wife, Chantal, undertook an expedition deep in the Himalaya of northern Nepal, into a remote valley that had been closed off to outsiders for decades. They led a team of artists (a photographer, a musician, and a painter), with the objective of capturing a moment in time through their unique lenses.

In 1941, a young Harvard-educated classicist named Varian Fry arrived in occupied France on a daring mission to rescue more than 2,000 of Europe's leading writers, artists, and intellectuals from the Nazis. Hounded by the Gestapo, he smuggled Marchel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt and dozens of other 20th century cultural luminaries out of France and brought them to America. So why did even the people Fry saved want to forget him?

More than fifty expeditions across all seven continents – by land, sea and air – have led adventurer Neil Laughton to some of the most remote places in the world. Adventureholic tells the stories of Neil’s most unforgettable and daring adventures yet.

Michele Graglia left Italy for Miami in 2007 to expand the family business. Caught in a thunderstorm, he ducked into a Johnny Rockets, got scouted by a renowned agent, and walked out a professional model. An elite modeling career brought expensive cars, penthouses, parties, and celebrities, but his accidental “American Dream” was never his own. Feeling the emptiness of a shallow, dark lifestyle, Michele set out for adventure and fulfillment, finding it in the unlikeliest place—a book about ultramarathon running.

What's it like to travel at more than 850 MPH, riding in a supersonic T-38 twin turbojet engine airplane? What happens when the space station toilet breaks? How do astronauts "take out the trash" on a spacewalk, tightly encapsulated in a space suit with just a few layers of fabric and Kevlar between them and the unforgiving vacuum of outer space?

It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over, and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet's final frontier? The night before the expedition's flagship launched, Billy Gawronski - a skinny, first-generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business - jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it?

The Monsoon Diaries is the firsthand account of Dr. Calvin Sun, an emergency-room doctor who worked tirelessly on the front lines in multiple hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon the lessons he learned from his adventures traveling to more than 190 countries in 10 years, as well as from the grief he experienced as a teen when his father died, Dr. Sun shares his journey, from growing up as a young Asian American in New York to his calling first to medical school and then to the open road.

Peter Beard lived an astonishing life. The artist, wildlife photographer, and bon vivant enthralled and inspired both because of his work and his legendary lifestyle. In Twentieth-Century Man, Wallace has rendered this towering figure in all of his contradictions and complexities—a deeply romantic and idiosyncratic personality, beloved by so many, whose sensibilities nonetheless remained firmly rooted in an era characterized by racist and colonialist attitudes. Stirring and visceral, Twentieth-Century Man is the definitive portrait of Peter Beard.

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.

Narrated by the author, this is the tell-all tale of hunting with the same crossbow for a decade. Detailed exploits of Bunjie the crossbow and lessons learned by the hunter who carried him make this book an enjoyable and informative listening experience. You will be a better hunter if you listen to the author read this book! Well, at least you will be a happier one.

Hascia, a precocious biochemistry major (class of 1966), was newly engaged in New York City and bored out of her mind - until she met and fell in love with Barry, a transfixing salesman and unconventional entrepreneur. When his business fell apart, Barry approached Hascia with a crazy idea: Why didn't they try their hand at building a life in Europe, away from the oppressive bureaucracies of the city? So off to Berlin they went, where they set up a wildly successful company selling educational materials to schools.

Die HMS Erebus war eines der wichtigsten Forschungsschiffe ihrer Zeit, ihre Expeditionen galten als bahnbrechend. Im Jahr 1848 verschwand sie spurlos in der Arktis - 2014 wurde sie gefunden. Dies ist ihre Geschichte - voller Aufbruchsgeist und Entdeckerlust, Abenteuer, Tragödien, Mut und Menschheitsgeschichte, mitreißend geschildert von niemand geringerem als Michael Palin: Monty-Python-Star, Weltreisender und begnadeter Erzähler.

On June 21, 1992, two best friends summited Mount Rainier. Within hours, their exquisite accomplishment would be overshadowed by tragedy. On their descent, Jim Davidson fell through an ice bridge on Rainier's northeast flank, plunging eighty feet into a narrow crevasse inside the Emmons Glacier and dragging Mike Price in after him. Mike fell to his death; Jim, badly injured and armed with minimal gear, faced an almost impossible climb back out of the crevasse, up a nearly vertical ice wall.

Nearly everything the American public has seen, read, and heard in the media for nearly 80 years about the so-called Amelia Earhart mystery is intentionally false or inadvertently misleading. The widely accepted myth that the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan during their ill-fated world-flight attempt in July 1937 is among the greatest aviation mysteries of the 20th century is an abject lie, the result of decades of government propaganda that continues unabated to this day.

Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys and the movie adaptation October Sky have become one of the most popular stories in the world. But what happened to Homer after he was a West Virginia rocket boy? In his latest memoir, Homer recounts how he fought through some of the worst battles in Vietnam, discovered sunken U-boats, befriended Tom Clancy, and more. Although told with humor and wit, Hickam does not shy away from the hardship endured and the mistakes he made during the tumultuous decades since his life in the town he made famous—Coalwood, West Virginia.

David Roberts, "veteran mountain climber and chronicler of adventures" (Washington Post), has spent his career documenting voyages to the most extreme landscapes on earth. In Limits of the Known, he reflects on humanity's - and his own - relationship to extreme risk. Part memoir and part history, this book tries to make sense of why so many have committed their lives to the desperate pursuit of adventure.