Explorer Memoirs

On 8 August 1914, five days after the outbreak of World War One, the Endurance, a wooden-hulled, coal-fired icebreaker, set sail for the South Pole, in a bid to complete the first-ever trans-Antarctic expedition, which would cross the continent from the Weddell Sea to Scott's base at Cape Evans, via the Pole. However, despite the best planning, the ship succumbs to the ice floes of the Weddell Sea, and is subjected to months of uncontrollable drifting before its crew makes a scramble for Elephant Island, where they battle constant cold and starvation.

Susan Casey is our premiere chronicler of the aquatic world. For The Underworld she traversed the globe, joining scientists and explorers on dives to the deepest places on the planet, interviewing the marine geologists, marine biologists, and oceanographers who are searching for knowledge in this vast unseen realm. She takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of deep-sea exploration, from the myths and legends of the ancient world to storied shipwrecks we can now reach on the bottom.

At 28,251 feet, K2 might be almost 800 feet shorter than Everest, but it’s a far harder climb. It will kill you on the way up and the way down. Mick Conefrey guides us through the early story of the legendary mountain and the extraordinary attempts that led up to its first ascent in 1954 - these are tales of riveting drama and unimaginable tragedy.

In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.

Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of a world that, like the self and like the stars, can never be fully mapped.

In The Mountain, veteran world-class climber and bestselling author Ed Viesturs—the only American to have climbed all fourteen of the world's 8,000-meter peaks—trains his sights on Mount Everest in richly detailed accounts of expeditions that are by turns personal, harrowing, deadly, and inspiring.

When Dr. Richard Greenberg, accompanied by his wife and three children, set out for a scenic day hike on the Nā Pali Coast of Kaua'i, he had little idea that the dream-like setting would soon be the backdrop of a living nightmare. With an unforeseen change in the weather, Dr. Greenberg and his family soon found themselves fighting for their lives. In this harrowing retelling of the unexpected events of that day and the journey that followed, Dr. Greenberg shares a miraculous story of disaster and rescue, of strength and faith, and of grief and recovery.

In this extraordinarily rare memoir by an active-duty jumper, Jason Ramos takes listeners into his exhilarating and dangerous world, explores smokejumping's remarkable history, and explains why their services are more essential than ever before.

When Kat Ward put down her pen after finishing the seventh book in her “KERI” series, she considered her mission complete. Nearly twenty years had passed since her therapist originally recommend writing as a means of healing her childhood wounds. And after taking listeners on a stomach-twisting journey through her hellish formative years, she was ready to look in the mirror again.

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory hounds in the desperate hunt. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic.

David Alan Arnold is an Emmy Award-winning TV cameraman who flies in a helicopter - but he started his Hollywood career with a broom in his hand. Somehow, sweeping the floor got him into some of the world’s biggest TV shows. David’s first book tells the unlikely story of mistakes and miracles that took him to some of the most dangerous places on Earth - soaring through the clouds, straight into a deadly phenomenon known as The Deadman’s Curve.

In her debut memoir Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey, Woniya shares how months of starving by herself in the Arctic wilderness brought more healing than suffering, and led to a deep sense of belonging and peace. Her story affirms the incredible strength of the human spirit and shows us that strength comes in many surprising forms. Never Alone's message is one of inspiration and learning to trust in ourselves and the land around us; embracing the wild and being wholly and beautifully human, flaws and all.

One April morning I left the Mexico border and walked north on the Pacific Crest Trail. For five months I hiked through the California desert, the snows of the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. My goal was to succeed in an epic challenge: to hike 2,650 miles and reach Canada before the October snows.

The true account of the 2017-2018 solo nonstop circumnavigation by Jerome Rand aboard the Westsail 32 Mighty Sparrow. A testament to endurance and adventure, this memoir recounts what life is like aboard a small sailboat during a 271-day voyage around the globe, alone, and without stopping. One of the greatest challenges of both body and mind, the author will take you onboard during the good times and the bad. As one of only a handful of people to have ever succeed in such a small boat, this story is truly the adventure of a lifetime.

Humanity faces an unprecedented crisis that threatens all life on Earth. Desert Storm fighter pilot and NASA astronaut Ron Garan addresses this head-on in Floating in Darkness: A Journey of Evolution. Ron takes us on an extraordinary journey through outer space and inner space. He explores the dancing, intersecting orbits of religion, spirituality, and science while grappling with his own role in the violence of combat and the effects of war on all aspects of human life.

An adrenaline-fueled travel memoir of life in the wild among the planet’s most ferocious and fascinating predators. Over the last forty years, bestselling science-fiction writer Alan Dean Foster has journeyed around the globe to encounter nature’s most fearsome creatures. His travels have taken him into the heart of the Amazon rain forest on the trail of deadly tangarana ants, on an elephant ride across the sweeping green plains of central India in search of the elusive Bengal tiger, and into the waters of the Australian coast to come face-to-face with great white sharks. Packed with pulse-pounding adventure and spiked with rapier wit, Predators I Have Known is a thrilling look at life and death in the wild.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon, a moment forever ingrained in history. Perhaps the world's greatest technological achievement - and a triumph of American spirit and ingenuity - the Apollo 11 mission, and the entire Apollo program, was a mammoth undertaking involving more than 410,000 men and women dedicated to putting a man on the Moon and winning the Space Race against the Soviets.

The Man Who Quit Money is an account of how one man learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyonlands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs - for shelter, food, and warmth - but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement.

Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was 19, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair's endeavor to become a "tough girl" - someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless.