Outdoors Memoirs

On the night before he was to turn forty, Rich Roll experienced a chilling glimpse of his future. Nearly fifty pounds overweight and unable to climb the stairs without stopping, he could see where his current sedentary life was taking him—and he woke up. Plunging into a new routine that prioritized a plant-based lifestyle and daily training, Rich morphed—in a matter of mere months—from out of shape, mid-life couch potato to endurance machine.

Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls and presided over one of the greatest football dynasties in history, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 70s. Later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his achievements as a competitor and a coach are the stuff of legend. But Noll always remained an intensely private and introspective man, never revealing much of himself as a person or as a coach, not even to the players and fans who revered him.

The world knows Lamar Odom as a two-time NBA world champion who rocketed to uncharted heights of fame thanks to being a member of both the storied Los Angeles Lakers and the ubiquitous Kardashian empire. But who is Lamar, really? Fans have long praised his accessibility and genuine everyman quality - he is a blinding talent who has suffered a series of heartaches, setback, and loss.

Scotty Bowman is recognized as the best coach in hockey history, and one of the greatest coaches in all of sports. He won more games and more Stanley Cups than anyone else. Despite all the changes in hockey, he coached at the very top for more than four decades, his first Cup win and his last an astonishing thirty-nine years apart. Yet perhaps most uniquely, different from anyone else who has ever lived or ever will again, he has continuously experienced the best of hockey since he was fourteen years old.

Ross Edgley famously ran a marathon pulling a 1.4-tonne car and climbed a rope the height of Everest (8,848 m), after living with Yamabushi warrior monks in Japan and partaking in Shamanic pain rituals with fire ants in the Amazon jungle. On his epic 1,780-mile journey around Great Britain, which lasted 157 days, Ross swam through giant jellyfish, arctic storms, ‘haunted’ whirlpools and polluted shipping lanes, going so hard, and so fast, his tongue fell apart.

The definitive portrait of Kobe Bryant, from the author of Michael Jordan. Eighteen-time All-Star, scorer of 81 points in a single game, MVP, and one of the best shooting guards in NBA league history: Kobe Bryant is among basketball's absolute greatest players, and his importance to the sport is undeniable. Third on the NBA career scoring list and owner of five championship rings, he is an undisputed all-time great, one deserving of this deep and definitive biography.

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters, demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature.

When she retired at age 19, Shannon Miller did so as one of the most recognizable gymnasts in the country. The winner of seven Olympic medals and the most decorated gymnast, male or female, in US history, Shannon tells a story of surviving and thriving. A shy, rambunctious girl raised in Oklahoma, Shannon fell in love with gymnastics at a young age and fought her way to the top.

Ultra running defies conventional logic. Yet this most brutal and challenging sport is now one of the fastest growing in the world. But is it an antidote to modern life or a symptom of a modern illness? Adharanand Finn travelled to the heart of the sport to find out - and to see if could become an ultra runner himself. His journey took him from the deserts of Oman to the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies, and from a 24-hour track race in Tooting to his ultimate goal, the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc.

Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. Most famously, he won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind.

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.

Bruce Lee is a cultural icon, renowned the world over for his martial arts and film legacy. But Lee was also a deeply philosophical thinker, learning at an early age that martial arts are more than just an exercise in physical discipline - they are an apt metaphor for living a fully realized life. Now, in Be Water, My Friend, Lee’s daughter, Shannon, shares the concepts at the core of his philosophies, showing how they can serve as tools of personal growth and self-actualization.

Growing up on a First Nation reserve, young Ted Nolan built his own backyard hockey rink and wore skates many sizes too big. But poverty wasn’t his biggest challenge. Playing the game meant spending his life in two worlds: one in which he was loved and accepted and one where he was often told he didn’t belong. Ted proved he had what it took, joining the Detroit Red Wings in 1978. But when his on-ice career ended, he discovered his true passion wasn’t playing; it was coaching.

From being nicknamed 'God of offside' to charting the future of team India, Sourav Ganguly is undoubtedly one of the greatest captains to have played for the country. His records speak for himself: 18,000+ international runs and 11,000 runs in ODI matches including 22 centuries with an average of 41.02! Moreover, Sourav still has the highest win/loss ratio (even higher than M.S. Dhoni’s) and also holds the record of the highest number of wins overseas as a test captain. What makes Sourav Chandidas Ganguly, the 'Prince of Kolkata', such a winner?

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the 45 original passengers and crew, only 16 made it off the mountain alive. For 10 excruciating weeks, they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, these men and women not only had to keep their faith; they had to make an impossible decision: Should they eat the flesh of their dead friends?

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.

In The Warrior, Christopher Clarey, Rafael Nadal's most mind-blowing achievement: 14 French Open titles. Nadal has won big on tennis's many surfaces en route to becoming one of the greatest players of all time: securing two Wimbledon titles on grass and four U.S. Open titles on cushioned acrylic hardcourts.

Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a rundown, off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations. CABIN is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of construction.

Paret lay on the ground, quivering gently, a small froth on his mouth. The house doctor jumped into the ring. He knelt. He pried Paret's eyelid open. He looked at the eyeball staring out. He let the lid snap shut. He reached into his satchel, took out a needle, jabbed Paret with a stimulant. Paret's back rose in a high arch. He writhed in real agony. They were calling him back from death. One wanted to cry out, "Leave the man alone. Let him die."

On April 13, 1986, ten-year-old Tiger Woods watches his idol, Jack Nicklaus, win his record sixth Masters. Just over a decade later, chants of “Ti-ger, Ti-ger!” ring out as the twenty- one-year-old wins his first Green Jacket. He blazes an incredible path, winning fourteen major titles (second only to Nicklaus himself) by the time he’s thirty- three, smashing records and raising standards. Then come multiple public scandals and potentially career-ending injuries.