Extreme Classics: The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time
1. The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922) As War and Peace
is to novels, so is The Worst Journey in the World to the literature of polar travel: the one
to beat. The author volunteered as a young man to go to the Antarctic with Robert Falcon
Scott in 1910; that, and writing this book, are the only things of substance he ever did in
life. They were enough. The expedition set up camp on the edge of the continent while
Scott waited to go for the Pole in the spring. But first, Cherry-Garrard and two other men
set out on a midwinter trek to collect emperor penguin eggs. It was a heartbreaker: three
men hauling 700 pounds (318 kilograms) of gear through unrelieved darkness, with
temperatures reaching 50, 60, and 70 degrees below zero (-46, -51, and -57 degrees
Celsius); clothes frozen so hard it took two men to bend them. But Cherry-Garrard's
greater achievement was to imbue everything he endured with humanity and even humor.
And—as when he describes his later search for Scott and the doomed South Pole team—
with tragedy as well. His book earns its preeminent place on this list by captivating us on
every level: It is vivid; it is moving; it is unforgettable.
National Geographic Books, 2002.
2. Journals, by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814) Are there two American
explorers more famous? Were there any braver? When they left St. Louis in 1804 to find a
water route to the Pacific, no one knew how extensive the Rocky Mountains were or even
exactly where they were, and the land beyond was terra incognita. Lewis and Clark's
Journals are the closest thing we have to a national epic, and they are magnificent, full of
the wonder of the Great West. Here are the first sightings of the vast prairie dog cities;
here are huge bears that keep on coming at you with five or six bullets in them, Indian
tribes with no knowledge of white men, the mountains stretching for a thousand miles;
here are the long rapids, the deep snows, the ways of the Sioux, Crow, Assiniboin; here are
buffalo by the millions. Here is the West in its true mythic proportions. Historian Stephen
Ambrose's Undaunted Courage gives a fine overview, but to hear the adventure in the two
captains' own dogged, rough-hewn words, you need the complete Elliott Coues edition in
three volumes. Buy all three. Dive in. Rediscover heroism.
National Geographic Books, 2002. Editor Elliott Coues published the definitive text
of the Lewis and Clark journals in 1893, now available in a three-volume set
entitled The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Dover Publications, 1979).
A new, abridged version is The Essential Lewis and Clark (HarperCollins, 2000).
3. Wind, Sand & Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1940) Saint-Exupéry was without
question the great pilot-poet of the air. And this remarkable classic attains its high ranking
here by soaring both as a piece of writing and as a tale of adventure. It was SaintExupéry's job in the 1920s to fly the mail from France to Spain across the Pyrenees, in all
kinds of weather, with bad maps and no radio. The engine on his plane would sometimes
quit, he says, "with a great rattle like the crash of crockery. And one would simply throw in
one's hand: there was no hope of refuge on the rocky crust of Spain." Nor in North Africa.
He came down once in the Libyan Desert, and there was no water. He and his companion
tramped this way and that and found no hope. "Nothing is unbearable," he tells us after a
while. "Tomorrow, and the day after, I should learn that nothing was really unbearable." He
is calm about it, thoughtful, disinterested, yet at the same time intense, riveting. He takes
us to places between impossible hope and endless despair we did not know existed.
Harcourt Brace, 1992.
4. Exploration of the Colorado River, by John Wesley Powell (1875) Powell lost most of
his right arm fighting for the Union, but that didn't stop him from leading the first descent
of the Grand Canyon. The year was 1869, and he and his nine men started on the Green
River in wooden boats. "We have an unknown distance yet to run," writes Powell, "an
unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the
channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well!" Ah, well,
indeed. The rapids were overpowering. They lost boats and supplies. They ran out of food.
Near the end, three of the men lost their nerve and climbed out of the canyon; they were
killed by Indians. The others stayed with Powell and survived. Powell himself was an
unusual man—tough, driven, hard to please. He was also a thoughtful man, a friend of
Native Americans, and a gifted geologist. It is this combination—deep curiosity allied with
great courage—that makes the book a classic.
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (National Geographic
Books, 2002).
5. Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger (1959) The southern Arabian desert, a quarter
million square miles of sand (650,000 square kilometers), is now a place of oil wells and
Land Rovers, but before the 1950s it was still known as the Empty Quarter, a place you
entered only on camel and only as an Arab. Only a few white men had ever seen it, much
less crossed it. From 1945 to 1950, the British Thesiger crossed it twice, living with the
Bedouin, sharing their hard lives. His book is the classic of desert exploration, a door
opening on a vanished feudal world. It is a book of touches, little things-why the Bedouin
will never predict the weather ("since to do so would be to claim knowledge that belongs to
God"), how they know when the rabbit is in its hole and can be caught. It is written with
great respect for these people and with an understanding that acknowledges its limits. With
humility, that is, which is appropriate. Fail the humility test, and the desert will surely kill
you.
Viking, 1985.
6. Annapurna, by Maurice Herzog (1952) No one had ever climbed an 8,000-meter
(26,250-ft.) peak when Herzog led a team of the best climbers in France to Annapurna in
1950. Maps were sketchy and inadequate; they had trouble even finding the peak. They
climbed without oxygen. The weather was bad. Nevertheless, Herzog and Louis Lachenal
made it to the top. But on the descent, disaster: lost gloves, frostbite, an avalanche. When
rescue came, Herzog had almost given up and could hardly move. He lost all his fingers
and thus did not write but dictated this book. It has its faults, mostly in Herzog's failure to
credit his teammates as fairly as he might. Yet it conveys the essential spirit of climbing as
no popular book had before and earns its place here as the most influential mountaineering
book of all time.
Lyons Press, 1997.
7. Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey (1968) Abbey is our very own desert father, a
hermit loading up on silence and austerity and the radical beauty of empty places. Early on
he spent summers working as a ranger at Utah's Arches National Monument, and those
summers were the source for this book of reverence for the wild—and outrage over its
destruction. But really his whole life was an adventure and a protest against all the masks
of progress. He wanted to recapture life on the outside—bare-boned, contemptuous of what
we call civilization—and to do it without flinching. He helped ignite the environmental
movement, teaching his followers to save the world by leaving it absolutely alone.
Simon and Schuster, 1990.
8. West With the Night, by Beryl Markham (1942) "A bloody wonderful book," Ernest
Hemingway called it, and so it is—Africa from the seat of an Avro biplane, winged prose, if
you will, about the lion that mauled her, about the Masai and the Kikuyu, about flying over
the Serengeti, searching for the downed plane of her lover. It appears that Markham's third
husband, writer Raoul Schumacher, contributed much of the literary polish. But what of it?
The book, and the life, still radiate excitement: "I have lifted my plane from the Nairobi
airport for perhaps a thousand flights and I have never felt her wheels glide from the earth
into the air without knowing the uncertainty and the exhilaration of firstborn adventure."
North Point Press, 2001.
9. Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer (1997) Was it fate that put Krakauer—at once a crack
climber, a seasoned journalist, and a sensitive conscience—on the world's highest mountain
during that notorious 1996 season? Unpredictable weather, human folly, and a mind-set
committed to client satisfaction killed 12 people on Everest that year, while the whole world
watched. Krakauer showed us what it really meant: the traffic jams on the summit ridge;
guides bending their own rules to get exhausted clients to the top. He showed us the
consequences of disrespect for this formidable goddess, Chomolungma, as the Sherpas call
her. And Krakauer is as hard on himself as he is on the rest. Whereas Annapurna is the
record of a triumph, Into Thin Air is the postmortem of a debacle—less inspiring, but no
less powerful. As the most widely read mountaineering work in recent history, it has
profoundly shaped our idea of extreme adventure and who and what it is for.
Anchor, 1999.
10. Travels, by Marco Polo (1298) Polo dictated these tales to a scribe, a writer of
romances named Rustichello, while the two men shared a cell in a Genoese prison. Just
how much Rustichello added to the text nobody knows. Yet most of what Polo tells us about
his overland journey to Asia checks out. He traveled during a relatively peaceful time, so
this is not a book about taking physical risks. Nor is it as accessible to modern readers as
many of the books on this list. Yet it is without question the founding adventure book of the
modern world. Polo gave to the age of exploration that followed the marvels of the East,
the strange customs, the fabulous riches, the tribes with gold teeth. It was a Book of
Dreams, an incentive, a goad. Out of it came Columbus (whose own copy of the book was
heavily annotated), Magellan, Vasco da Gama, and the rest of modern history.
The Travels of Marco Polo, in two volumes (Dover Publications, 1993).
11. Farthest North, by Fridtjof Nansen (1897) In 1893, Nansen purposely froze his ship
into the Arctic ice and traveled with the drift of the pack. When the ship approached
striking distance of the Pole, he set out for it by dogsled, reaching the highest latitude yet
attained by man before turning back to Norway. He was gone three years. The book is both
an epic and a lyric masterpiece.
Modern Library, 1999.
12. The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen (1978) He sees wolves, he sees the wild
blue sheep of the Himalaya, but he never does see a snow leopard. Never mind, this is still
Matthiessen's best book, a moving spiritual quest and a mountain adventure that
celebrates the beauty of this dramatic country and the transcendence concealed in simple
day-by-day survival.
Penguin, 2001.
13. Roughing It, by Mark Twain (1872) Twain lit out for the territory when the Civil War
started and knocked around the West for six years. Roughing It is the record of that time, a
great comic bonanza, hilarious when it isn't simply funny, full of the most outrageous
characters and events. It is not an adventure book, it is an anti-adventure book, but no
less indispensable.
Penguin, 2000.
14. Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana (1840) Scion of a prominent
Boston family, Dana dropped out of Harvard and, hoping to recover the strength of his
eyes, weakened by measles, signed on with a merchant ship as a common sailor. His book
about his time at sea is an American classic, vivid in its description of the sailor's life and all
its dangers and delights.
Penguin, 2000.
15. South, by Ernest Shackleton (1919) Shackleton's story bears endless retelling (and it
has been retold, in fine accounts by Alfred Lansing and, more recently, Caroline Alexander).
Here we have it in the great British explorer's own words, quiet, understated, enormously
compelling. We all know the story: the expedition to Antarctica in the Endurance, the ship
breaking up in the ice, the incredible journey in an open boat across the world's stormiest
seas. Though Shackleton's literary gifts may not equal those of Cherry-Garrard or Nansen,
his book is a testament, plain and true, to what human beings can endure.
Lyons Press, 1998.
16. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby (1958) A British high-fashion
salesman and a diplomat, Newby and Hugh Carless, with four days' climbing lessons in the
Welsh hills, walk into Afghanistan, climb mountains, run into Kafirs with rifles ("Here," one
tells the pair happily, "we shoot people without permission"), have a grand time, and
survive. The result? This witty, dry, and very English adventure book.
Lonely Planet, 1998.
17. Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl (1950) Nine balsa-wood logs, a big square sail, a bamboo
"cabin" with a roof made of banana leaves—thus did Norwegian Heyerdahl and his
companions set sail from Peru toward Polynesia to prove a point: that the South Pacific was
settled from the east. Point proved? Maybe not, but it's one hell of a ride—a daring tale,
dramatically told.
Hardcover edition from Adventure Library, 1997.
18. Travels in West Africa, by Mary Kingsley (1897) She went by steamboat and canoe,
accompanied by native crewmen, up the Ogooué. She fought off crocodiles with a paddle,
hit a leopard over the head with a pot, and wrote with equal charm about beetles and
burial customs. Other African explorers were more daring, none more engaging. When she
died, the British buried her at sea with full military honors.
National Geographic Books, 2002.
19. The Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles Lindbergh (1953) This is Lindbergh's account of
perhaps the most famous air journey ever made, the first nonstop flight from New York to
Paris. It's a spacious book, too, full of incident—bailouts over Illinois cornfields, Lindbergh's
barnstorming days, family lore. More than the tale of a great adventure, it's a portrait of
the adventurer.
Minnesota Historical Society, 1993.
20. Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer (1953) Escaping from a British prisoner-ofwar camp in India, the great Austrian climber headed for the mountains, Tibet, and
freedom. Amazingly, he got all the way to Lhasa, where he befriended the young Dalai
Lama. Revelations of Harrer's Nazi past have clouded his reputation, yet the book's deeply
sympathetic portrait of the Tibetans endures.
Putnam, 1997.
21. Journals, by James Cook (1768-1779) Captain Cook made three voyages to the
Pacific, discovered the east coast of Australia, stove a hole in his boat within the Great
Barrier Reef, tried to find the Northwest Passage, had countless encounters with natives—
and died during one of them—and was one of the greatest explorers the world has ever
known. His Journals are a sober but fascinating account of how it felt to redefine the
boundaries of the known world.
Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific, as Told by Selections of His
Own Journals, 1768-1779 (Dover Publications, 1971). Penguin publishes an
abridged version, The Journals of Captain Cook (2000).
22. Home of the Blizzard, by Douglas Mawson (1915) It is Antarctica, 1912, and the
Australian Mawson and two other men set out across King George Land. They find
themselves in treacherous terrain, and one vanishes into a crevasse, along with dogs, a
sledge, and most of the food. Then the second man dies of starvation and dysentery.
Blizzards rage for days, a week. Mawson endures. Mawson lives. A fine read that has never
gotten quite the attention it deserves.
St. Martin's Press, 2000.
23. The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin (1839) The grand old man of modern
biology was a gentleman of leisure, a crack shot, and no scientist when, at 22, he boarded
the Beagle for its long survey voyage to South America and the Pacific. His record of the
trip is rich in anthropology and science. (His shipmates called him "the Fly-catcher.") The
adventure comes in watching over Darwin's shoulder as he works out the first glimmerings
of his theory of evolution.
National Geographic Books, 2004.
24. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence (1926) A desert woman speaks to
the British adventurer of his "horrible blue eyes which looked, she said, like the sky shining
through the eye-sockets of an empty skull." Indeed. He must have been something—crazily
intense in his white robes, as romantic a figure as any who has ever lived: Lawrence of
Arabia. Who could resist such a book as this?
Anchor, 1991.
25. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, by Mungo Park (1799) In 1795, Park
enters the African interior with a servant, a horse, some clothing, a few trade goods, a pair
of pistols, and two days' worth of provisions. Eighteen months later, he emerges with
nothing but the clothes on his back and his notes, which he'd kept in his hat. In between
lies perhaps the best of the great early African explorations.
Duke University Press, 2000.
26. The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe (1979) With all the flash and fireworks of Wolfe's
writing, it's easy to overlook that, at bottom, he's a great reporter. And this long and
intimate look into the lives, minds, and deeds of the men who rode the first American
rockets into space remains Wolfe's best book and the first true classic from the dawn of
space exploration. The race with the Russians, the dauntless Chuck Yeager—Wolfe piles
story upon story, and the pile glows.
Bantam, 1996.
27. Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum (1900) At loose ends and in
your 50s, what better way to pass the time than to sail alone around the world? The
journey took three years and covered 46,000 miles (74,000 kilometer); Slocum was chased
by pirates, survived major storms, suffered hallucinations. But he made it. He was the first
to do it alone. Then he wrote this marvelous, salty book. In 1909, he put to sea again. This
time, he disappeared.
National Geographic Books, 2004.
28. The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative, by David Roberts
(1968, 1970) "The deepest despair I have ever felt, as well as the most piercing
happiness, has come in the mountains," writes Roberts (now an Adventure contributing
editor). Here we have both, in two books, now available in one volume, that Roberts wrote
when he was still in his 20s. The mountains are in Alaska; the passion is all in Roberts's
young heart.
Mountaineers, 1991.
29. First Footsteps in East Africa, by Richard Burton (1856) He spoke fluent Arabic and
traveled in disguise to places barred to infidels. Harer, in East Africa, was one such place,
and he wrote this extraordinary book about his adventures there. Burton was the very
archetype of the British explorer—eccentric, restless, brave. A product of his time, he was
consciously superior to the natives, but remarkably adept at making his way through alien
cultures nonetheless. You read him for him as much as for what he accomplished.
Dover Publications, 1987.
30. The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger (1997) Waves ten stories high, hurricaneforce winds, longline swordfish fishermen and their wives and girlfriends, bad omens,
National Guard air-rescue teams, heroism, fear, and the bars of Gloucester, Massachusetts:
Junger has a gift for gathering the elements, if you will, of his story, dramatizing them and
impressing the hell out of you with the power of weather.
HarperCollins, 1999.
31. The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman (1849) In 1846, the future historian of the
American West went west himself, following the trail of the emigrant trains into the
Rockies. "A month ago," he writes along the way, "I should have thought it rather a
startling affair to have an acquaintance ride out in the morning and lose his scalp before
night, but here it seems the most natural thing in the world." Generations of readers have
loved this book; you will, too.
National Geogrpahic Books, 2002.
32. Through the Dark Continent, by Henry M. Stanley (1878) We know him for finding
Livingstone, who wasn't lost, in 1871, but the truly adventurous trip was Stanley's next, in
1874, when the British explorer became one of the first Europeans to run the length of the
Congo. His account of that journey reads like some wonderful old boys' adventure tale—
except that it's true.
Dover Publications, in two volumes, 1988.
33. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, by Isabella L. Bird (1879) Bird was no lady
in the conventional Victorian sense but a world traveler. She ventured through the Rockies
when they were still wild, met up with grizzly bears, and climbed Longs Peak when it was
thought impossible for a woman to do so. She had to thaw her ink on the cabin stove to
write, and she wrote delightfully.
Hardcover edition from University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
34. In the Land of White Death, by Valerian Albanov (1917) In 1912, two dozen men
on a Russian ship found themselves frozen into the Arctic ice. Eleven tried to walk out. In
the end, two made it back to civilization; Albanov was one of them. It's a great survival
story, well told, and (at least until its recent reissue, which was excerpted in Adventure,
November/December 2000) virtually unknown in the English-speaking world.
Hardcover edition from Modern Library, 2000.
35. Endurance, by F.A. Worsley (1931) Worsley was the captain of the Endurance,
escaped with Shackleton when their ship was crushed, and bore what they all bore. He
navigated that heroic open-boat journey to South Georgia island, through weather that was
so bad he could take sights on the sun only four times in 800 miles (1300 km). Still, they
hit the island square on. Nice. His account is brisker than the thorough Shackleton's, but
keeps the excitement intact.
Norton, 2000.
36. Scrambles Amongst the Alps, by Edward Whymper (1871) Whymper is famous for
his first ascent of the Matterhorn and for the accident coming down, in which four of his
companions died when their rope broke. He was irritable and sour but also a true iron man
of the mountains. And his book ranks high among the classics of mountaineering in part for
having helped promote the very notion that peaks are meant to be climbed.
National Geographic Books, 2002.
37. Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen (1937) Karen Blixen (who wrote under the pseudonym
Isak Dinesen) knew the African countryside as intimately as her own face in the mirror.
"The civilized people," she wrote, "have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons
in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it." From her own wild heart she wrote
this achingly beautiful book.
Hardcover edition from Modern Library, 1992.
38. Scott's Last Expedition: The Journals, by Robert Falcon Scott (1913) Whatever
else English explorers can do, they can almost always write. And when things are at their
worst, they manage, somehow, to be most eloquent. That's the only word for Scott's
Journals, with its entries running right to the end of his desperate race home from the
South Pole. Scott's courage—and his mistakes—are known to everyone. Here it all is as he
lived it, and as he died.
Carroll & Graf, 1996.
39. Everest: The West Ridge, by Thomas Hornbein (1965) In 1963, Americans Hornbein
and Willi Unsoeld went for the West Ridge of Everest and soon realized their route was too
difficult to descend. So it was up and over, summit or die. They reached the top at 6:15
p.m. "The sun's rays sheered horizontally across the summit," Hornbein writes. "We
hugged each other as tears welled up, ran down across our oxygen masks, and turned to
ice." A breakthrough ascent, recounted simply and well.
Mountaineers, 1998.
40. Journey Without Maps, by Graham Greene (1936) Liberia, 1935: "The great
majority of all mosquitoes caught in Monrovia are of a species known to carry yellow fever."
The U.S. Army map of the country's interior filled in the blanks with the word "Cannibals."
"Have you thought of the leeches?" someone asked Greene. He went anyway, into the
forest, on foot, village to village. Be glad. The book is just plain great.
Penguin, 1992.
41. Starlight and Storm, by Gaston Rébuffat (1954) Frenchman Rébuffat climbed all six
of the toughest north faces in the Alps and was one of the great guides and climbers of his
day. One of the most joyful, too. Never has a man taken to his work with such enthusiasm.
It makes his modest book a delight to read; you cannot come away from it without wanting
to go into the mountains yourself. Modern Library, 1999.
42. My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir (1911) In the summer of 1869, young
and fresh, Muir traveled through the Sierra Nevada with a shepherd and his flock. This
book is his journal, and it, too, is young and fresh. Muir, who would become a legendary
advocate for wilderness and the founder of the Sierra Club, always played down the
dangers he faced. But this book is full, nevertheless, of bears. And charm. It reminds you
of how much wildness we have lost.
Sierra Club, 1990.
43. My Life as an Explorer, by Sven Hedin (1925) One example out of dozens: In
December 1899, the great Swedish explorer of Central Asia sets out with four men and
limited supplies to cross 180 miles (290 km) of enormous sand dunes. Temperatures drop
far below zero. A camel dies. The men despair. The ink freezes in Hedin's pen. You hold
your breath. Hedin keeps going. His thick and engaging autobiography is crammed with
this kind of excitement.
National Geographic Books, 2003.
44. In Trouble Again, by Redmond O'Hanlon (1988) Naturalist and lunatic, not
necessarily in that order, O'Hanlon ventures into the northern Amazon Basin, where he
hangs with the Yanomami, smokes their hallucinogens, and gleefully tells us about all the
things that will make you sick or kill you. His book earns its ranking here on the strength of
its unflagging humor.
Vintage, 1990.
45. The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher (1968) With this book,
Fletcher may be said to have started the backpacking craze. It was his idea to walk the
200-mile (322 kilometers) length of the Grand Canyon, which had never been done. He did
it, wrote this excellent book, and hundreds of thousands have since taken to the trails.
Vintage, 1989.
46. K2—The Savage Mountain, by Charles Houston and Robert Bates (1954) K2 is a
killer, not quite as high as Everest but more difficult. This book describes the 1953 attempt
by a mostly American group who didn't reach the top but demonstrated, in the face of
storms, an accident, and the death of one, the kind of modest courage you can only call
exemplary.
Lyons Press, 2000.
47. Gipsy Moth Circles the World, by Francis Chichester (1967) At 64, after a life
already rich with adventure, Chichester left England to sail alone around the world,
stopping once. Though Slocum faced much greater unknowns, Chichester nonetheless
endured capsizing, injury, and the huge storms of the Southern Ocean. He reached England
a national hero, and his fine book helped inspire today's round-the-globe sailboat races.
Hardcover edition from McGraw-Hill, 2000.
48. Man-Eaters of Kumaon, by Jim Corbett (1944) Corbett was an Indian-born
Englishman who became legendary for his ability to track and kill man-eating tigers and
leopards—a valuable skill in a region where a single tiger could kill as many as 400 people.
This is old-fashioned storytelling at its best.
Oxford University Press, 1993. The hardcover Adventure Library edition, ManEaters, combines stories from The Man-Eaters of Kumaon with Corbett's The ManEating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1997).
49. Alone, by Richard Byrd (1938) Spend the Antarctic winter alone in a small shed and it
might get to you. It got to American explorer Admiral Byrd, who almost died from carbon
monoxide poisoning. This is the story of his struggle with loneliness, despair, his body,
himself. Some of Byrd's other claimed accomplishments now look questionable, but there's
no doubt about this one.
Kodansha, 1995.
50. Stranger in the Forest, by Eric Hansen (1988) After trying and failing several times,
spraining his ankle, and being frightened by tales of crocodiles seven meters (23 feet) long,
Hansen managed to walk across Borneo, for reasons not at all clear to himself. He was
brave and savvy enough to face down suspicious tribesmen carrying spears, but it is his
open-minded humility when meeting the natives that is most impressive. That and his often
charming klutziness. A wonderfully appealing book.
Vintage, 2000.
51. Travels in Arabia Deserta, by Charles M. Doughty (1888) During his two years in the
desert, Doughty traveled with camel caravans, lived in Bedouin tents, went hungry, and
faced much danger. Then he wrote it all up in the most stylized, peculiar prose, which
nevertheless gives us a fascinating picture of a type of Arab life that has been all but
forgotten today.
Out of print, but secondhand copies are available.
52. The Royal Road to Romance, by Richard Halliburton (1925) Ah, youth. No sooner
did he leave Princeton than Halliburton was working his way across the Atlantic, bicycling
through Germany, climbing the Matterhorn. He was in jail and out; he hunted tigers in
India and trekked in Kashmir. And he was never anything less than exuberant.
Travelers' Tales, 2000.
53. The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz (1956) The author, a Polish cavalry officer, and
six other men escaped from a Siberian prison camp in 1941, walked across Mongolia and
the Gobi, through Tibet and the Himalaya, enduring incredible hardship all the way. Four of
them made it to India and safety. It is a 3,000-mile (4,830-kilometer) epic, truly grand.
Lyons Press, 1997.
54. Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, by Clarence King (1872) King was a Yale
man, a ladies' man, a friend of Henry Adams's, and a geologist. While still in his 20s, he
began a survey of the 40th parallel, from the Sierra to the Rockies. He had adventures
galore and was a natural storyteller. He was also one of the first Americans to climb
mountains simply because they were there.
University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
55. My Journey to Lhasa, by Alexandra David-Neel (1927) At the age of 55,
Frenchwoman David-Neel crossed the Himalaya in midwinter and entered forbidden Tibet in
native disguise. It was an extremely dangerous journey; she faced starvation, bandits, and
unspeakable weather. But she brought to it a passion for Tibet and a fluency in the
language that carried her through—and carries her readers as well.
Beacon Press, 1993.
56. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, by John Hanning Speke (1863)
Herodotus tells us about five young men of the Nasamones tribe who tried and failed to
find the source of the Nile. More than 2,200 years later, it was still unknown. In two
separate expeditions, in 1858 and 1860, British explorer Speke located and named Lake
Victoria and at last determined that this was the origin of the Nile. His book reads like
Victorian fiction-sweeping, detailed, and hip-deep in exploits.
Dover Publications, 1996.
57. Running the Amazon, by Joe Kane (1989) Kane joined up with an international
team—if that's the word for this squabbling group—to paddle from the high Andes all the
way to the Atlantic through terrifying rapids and everything else. Their feat may not match
John Wesley Powell's, but the cast is colorful, the action exciting, and the human drama as
interesting as the physical.
Vintage, 1990.
58. Alive, by Piers Paul Read (1974) People are still talking about the events this book
describes: the crash of a Fairchild F-227 in the Chilean Andes in 1972 with a Uruguayan
rugby team aboard; the fruitless search for survivors; the 16 people who did survive; and,
most important, how they survived for ten weeks in the mountains—by eating their dead.
In this nicely understated account by novelist Read, great courage and great horror go
hand in hand.
Hardcover edition from Adventure Library, 1996.
59. Principall Navigations, by Richard Hakluyt (1589-1590) Hakluyt believed that
England should rule the seas and develop colonies before Spain gobbled up the whole
world, and he compiled this book to fire the ambitions of his countrymen. At a million and a
half words, it's less a book than an encyclopedia, packed with exploration and adventure
stories that run from the tales of King Arthur to Drake, Raleigh, and beyond. It was, of
course, influential beyond measure.
Penguin's abridged version of Principall Navigations is titled Voyages and
Discoveries (1972).
60. Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, by John Lloyd Stephens (1843) Imagine hacking
your way through thick jungle while racked with malaria. The country around you is in
chaos and on the brink of civil war. And you discover, despite all this, the lost city of Tikal.
And 43 other Maya ruins. Stephens is the father of American archaeology, and this is his
beautiful account of the expedition that made him so.
National Geographic Books, 2004.
61. Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex, by Owen Chase (1821) Melville used this
famous tale as a source for Moby Dick (and it was recently recounted again in Nathaniel
Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea), but here's the real thing: the first mate's account of
how the Essex was sunk by a whale and how the survivors made it to South America in a
small open boat.
Lyons Press, 1999.
62. Life in the Far West, by George Frederick Ruxton (1849) Ruxton was an English
adventurer who visited the American West, then returned to England and wrote this book.
Technically, it's a novel (he changed a few names), but in fact it's a more accurate look at
the lives of the mountain men than most nonfiction accounts. It's full of marvelous stories,
and its heroes are just what we'd expect: strong, resourceful men of few words.
University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
63. My Life as an Explorer, by Roald Amundsen (1927) Though his prose may not be as
colorful as Nansen's, this great Norwegian explorer's achievements are unsurpassed: He
was the first to sail the Northwest Passage, and he beat Scott to the South Pole. In his
autobiography he reveals what inspired such a life: As a lad he had read about the travails
of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. "A strange ambition burned within me to endure those
same sufferings," he writes.
Out of print.
64. News from Tartary, by Peter Fleming (1936) Armed with a rifle, six bottles of
brandy, and Macaulay's History of England (but lacking a passport), Fleming set out from
Peking for India in the 1930s via forbidden Xinjiang, and he reports, with typically British
irony, the troubles he ran into. (The rifle came in handy.) If only all adventurers could write
this well.
Northwestern University Press, 1999.
65. Annapurna: A Woman's Place, by Arlene Blum (1980) Ask a woman climber what
inspired her and she's likely to name this book, the story of a 1978 ascent of Annapurna by
a team of women, two of whom died. "What's a nice girl from the Midwest doing up here all
alone?" the author asks herself at one point. Surviving. Blum's depiction of the team's
Sherpas irks some climbers, but there's no denying the book's impact.
Sierra Club, 1998.
66. Mutiny on the Bounty, by William Bligh (1790) The movies have taught us to see
Captain Bligh as a villain and the mutineers as justified, but Bligh's own account, naturally,
tells a different story. Once the rebellious sailors force Bligh and 18 loyal crew members
onto the Bounty's 23-foot (7 meter) longboat, it becomes a remarkable survival story: an
open-boat voyage of nearly 4,000 miles (6,440 km), on a scrap of bread and a half cup of
water per man per day.
Out of print.
67. Adrift, by Steven Callahan (1986) American Callahan was sailing alone across the
Atlantic when his 21-foot (6.5 meter) sailboat suddenly sank and he had only moments to
get out. He spent 76 days drifting, starving, fighting off sharks, and patching his raft before
making landfall. He shows us just how much will and intelligence it takes to survive in such
hopeless circumstances.
Random House, 1996.
68. Castaways, by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1555) Three hundred would-be
conquistadores land near present-day Tampa in 1528 to make Florida their own. Eight
years later, four naked survivors, our author among them, emerge from the wilderness of
Mexico. Though little known outside historical circles, this is one of the most extraordinary
survival stories ever told.
University of California Press, 1993.
69. Touching the Void, by Joe Simpson (1989) Descending a hard route in the Andes,
Simpson broke his leg and his partner was forced to do the unthinkable: He cut the rope
between them. That Simpson survived the fall, that he crawled down the mountain on his
own, makes for some of the most hair-raising reading you'll ever enjoy.
HarperCollins, 1998.
70. Tracks, by Robyn Davidson (1980) Broke, a bit mad, but totally determined, Davidson
traveled (mostly) alone across 1,700 miles (2,735 km) of Australian outback on wild camels
that she herself had trained. This is a wonderful account of a loopy adventure that had
nothing going for it but perseverance.
Vintage, 1995.
71. The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, by Washington Irving (1837) Irving bought
an unpolished memoir by a trapper named Benjamin Bonneville for $1,000 and then
rewrote it. It was a good investment; this lively account, stocked with incident and grand in
its sweep, is the happy result.
National Geographic Books, 2003.
72. Cooper's Creek, by Alan Moorehead (1963) The story of the Burke and Wills
expedition of 1860 into the unknown outback is almost an Australian epic. Moorehead, an
Australian himself and a superb writer, tells the story of this tragic pair, their trek across
the continent and back again, and their final days at Cooper Creek, where they starved to
death.
Hardcover edition from Amereon, 1987.
73. The Fearful Void, by Geoffrey Moorhouse (1974) Moorhouse wanted to be the first
man to cross the Sahara, west to east, over 3,000 miles (4,830 kilometers) of sand. He
also wanted to face his fears of loneliness, of annihilation, of being lost. He managed to
make it 2,000 miles (3,220 kilometers), and his account of his experiences, outer and
inner, is understated but compelling.
Out of print, but secondhand copies are available.
74. No Picnic on Mount Kenya, by Felice Benuzzi (1953) You're bored and dispirited, an
Italian mountain climber stuck in a British POW camp in East Africa in 1943. What to do?
Simple: Escape. Climb Mount Kenya with homemade equipment and little food. And then
sneak back in. Benuzzi and two other men did just that, and though it was no picnic, it
saved their souls.
Lyons Press, 1999.
75. Through the Brazilian Wilderness, by Theodore Roosevelt (1914) All bluff and
bluster? Not Teddy. People died on this trip down the Rio da Dúvida, or the River of Doubt,
which had never been mapped. Poisonous snakes were common, close calls frequent,
starvation a possibility, fever inevitable. A thrilling book.
Cooper Square, 2000.
76. The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron (1937) Byron, a British adventurer, traveled in
the early 1930s to the river anciently called the Oxus, between Russia and Afghanistan,
looking for ruins. This book is his odd, sometimes funny, and always delightful account of
the often dangerous trip.
Oxford University Press, 1982.
77. Minus 148°, by Art Davidson (1969) Coming down from the first winter ascent of
Mount McKinley, three climbers get caught in winds of 130 miles (202 kilometers) an hour
(202 km/hour)—and hence a windchill of minus 148°F (minus 100°C) and that
melodramatic title. They dig an ice cave to survive, their hands freeze up, the wind just
won't quit. Whew! A minor classic in the will-they-make-it? category.
Mountaineers, 1999.
78. Travels, by Ibn Battúta (circa 1354) The great 14th-century Moroccan wan-derer
Battúta spent half his long life on the move. He went deep into Africa, circled India, and
reached Russia, Sumatra, Shanghai. He was sometimes wealthy, sometimes penniless,
often in danger. His book reminds us how ignorant we are of lives lived outside the Western
tradition, and of a time when all travel was adventurous.
Ibn Battúta, Travels in Asia and Africa (AES, 1986). This hardcover edition is
published in India and available through a domestic distributor, South Asia Books
(573-474-0116; [email protected]).
79. Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, by Tim Cahill (1987) America's premier outdoor gonzo
journalist, Cahill seems to have a license to get into trouble and does so consistently and
well. Jaguars don't actually rip his flesh, but he does dive with sharks and nap with gorillas
in this, his best collection of adventure journalism.
Vintage, 1996.
80. Journal of a Trapper, by Osborne Russell (1914) Angry wounded grizzly bears, boats
made out of buffalo hide, fights with the Blackfeet, semistarvation—it's all here, the life of a
trapper in the Rockies in the 1830s and '40s, as told by one of the survivors, who kept this
raw journal.
Narrative Press, 2001.
81. Full Tilt, by Dervla Murphy (1965) In the winter of 1963, Murphy got on her bicycle
and crossed Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Himalaya to reach India—by
herself. She was not afraid, she says. Nevertheless, she carried a pistol, and needed it.
Overlook Press, 1987.
82. Terra Incognita, by Sara Wheeler (1996) Now that Antarctica has been explored, is
there anything more to say about it? Ask Wheeler, who went down to find out and came
back to write this excellent book, in which she recounts some of the old Antarctic stories
and tells many new ones, too.
Modern Library, 1999.
83. We Die Alone, by David Howarth (1955) In 1943, Norwegian commandos sailed into
a Nazi trap on the northern coast of Norway, and only Jan Baalsrud survived. This book
tells the story of Baalsrud's escape across the snowbound Norwegian mountains and of the
brave villagers who helped him. It's a great survival tale, and the good guys win.
Lyons Press, 1999.
84. Kabloona, by Gontran de Poncins (1941) "If you see a man in a blizzard bending over
a rock you may be sure it is me and that I am lost." So says de Poncins in this intense and
very beautiful book about his sojourn among the Inuit in the Canadian north, where he
goes to assuage a restlessness in his soul. This is his story of finding himself.
Graywolf Press, 1996.
85. Conquistadors of the Useless, by Lionel Terray (1961) Terray's father once told him
he'd have to be crazy to climb a mountain, "when there isn't even a hundred franc note to
be picked up at the summit." Terray nonetheless spent his life making spectacular climbs,
which he describes with French panache in this wonderful autobiography.
Mountaineers, 2001.
86. Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins (1974) An astronaut's life is adventurous by
definition. Apollo 11 pilot Michael Collins's account of his own is clean, often funny at his
own expense, modestly heroic. The best firsthand account of spaceflight so far, it tells us
what it was like up there, encapsulated in the infinity of space, how it felt to fall off the
edge of the known world.
Cooper Square, 2001.
87. Adventures in the Wilderness, by William H. H. Murray (1869) The wilderness is the
Adirondacks, and Murray's book about camping, fishing, running rapids, and generally
having a blast there helped begin a national craze to get out in the open.
Syracuse University Press, 1989.
88. The Mountains of My Life, by Walter Bonatti (1998) The great Italian climber was
always a loner and controversial among his countrymen, but no one denies his greatness.
This edition includes his persuasive defense of his much criticized role in the first ascent of
K2—it's a high-altitude detective story. And he writes like a dream.
Modern Library, 2001.
89. Great Heart, by James West Davidson and John Rugge (1988) An impenetrable
wilderness, death by starvation, the intrepid men and women of Labrador. This book
recounts the tale of a failed 1903 expedition into the region's heart and then of two more
attempts by rival groups, in 1905, to finish what the first one started. The authors retraced
the original routes for this powerful account.
Kodansha, 1997.
90. Journal of the Voyage to the Pacific, by Alexander Mackenzie (1801) Ten years
before Lewis and Clark, the Canadian Mackenzie, traveling with a group of voyageurs,
became the first white man to cross North America. The story of their struggle to take their
birch-bark canoe against the current up the Peace River is worth a book in itself.
Dover Publications, 1996.
91. The Valleys of the Assassins, by Freya Stark (1934) Amateur archaeologist Stark
takes the usual British attitude to adventure—What, me worry?—as she crosses vast empty
places in Persia, dodging bandits, dodging the police, and "passing through fear to the
absence of fear." A fine memoir.
Modern Library, 2001.
92. The Silent World, by Jacques Cousteau (1953) Here is Jacques Cousteau before he
became, well, Jacques Cousteau. This is his first book, about the invention of scuba gear
and those first, daring dives with the new equipment.
National Geographic Books, 2004.
93. Alaska Wilderness, by Robert Marshall (1956) The great conservationist Bob
Marshall spent much of the 1930s exploring Alaska's Brooks Range. His book is doublebarreled, full of his transcendent delight in wild places and full of adventure. By page 28,
he is already recording this comment in his journal: "This may be the last thing I ever
write." Happily, it wasn't.
University of California Press, 1956.
94. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North
American Indians, by George Catlin (1841) Catlin spent six years among the Plains
Indians, and his paintings of them are world renowned. His book should be, too. He was a
brave man—ready to take on a grizzly unaided—and a sensitive one. His book glows with
respect for these people. Much of what we know about their lives we know because of him.
Read, and give thanks.
Dover Publications, in two volumes, 1973.
95. I Married Adventure, by Osa Johnson (1940) And so she did, when she wed wildlife
photographer Martin Johnson, who took her to Africa and the Pacific and into a very
exciting life indeed. She tells their story in straight-on American gee-whiz style; it would
have the feel of Oklahoma!, say, if those weren't real, and very angry, elephants chasing
them up trees.
Kodansha, 1997.
96. The Descent of Pierre Saint-Martin, by Norbert Casteret (1954) Pierre SaintMartin, in the Pyrenees, is one of the world's deepest caves. Casteret was one of the great
pioneering speleologists. It took three years to explore this cave system to its end; one
man died, and the story is a thriller.
Out of print, but secondhand copies are available.
97. The Crystal Horizon, by Reinhold Messner (1982) In 1980, Messner climbed Everest
alone—without oxygen. Though he is perhaps a better climber than writer, his story of the
ascent still resonates: From then on, mountaineers would be asked not whether they
reached a summit but how.
Mountaineers, 1998.
98. Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, by
John Kirk Townsend (1839) Townsend, a naturalist, tagged along on a fur-trading
expedition to Oregon and writes with great exuberance about his adventures among
Indians, grizzlies, buffalo, and mountain men.
Oregon State University Press, 1999.
99. Grizzly Years, by Doug Peacock (1990) Peacock is an ex-Green Beret medic, a
sometime wilderness guide, and the model for the ecoterrorist Hayduke in Edward Abbey's
novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. He's also one of the world's leading experts on the grizzly
and has had more encounters with these lords of the wilderness than probably any other
living American. There's nothing quite like walking through a landscape loaded with bear.
Henry Holt, 1996.
100. One Man's Mountains, by Tom Patey (1971) In climbing, or any true adventure, if
you're not having fun, what's the point? Patey knew better than anyone how to have fun in
the hills. This is a wonderful collection of his short pieces, full of climbing feats and honest
humor. He died young, doing what he loved.
Mountaineers, 1998.
To Conquer the Air, by James Tobin
James Tobin, a journalist twice nominated for a Pulitzer, is also a historian, and it's criminal
a writer should be so good in two fields. In this book, the most critically acclaimed of all the
books to celebrate the Wright Brothers' 100-year anniversary, Tobin jumps smoothly
between the Wrights and their competition—Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Pierpont
Langley, Alexander Graham Bell in Canada, a collection of assorted Frenchmen—and back
to the Wrights. He explains the technology of flying without losing the reader, dramatizes
but does not overdramatize, and breathes life into the dead. Tobin has written a history of
flight that ought to become the standard for his generation.
Simon and Schuster, 2003.
The Darkest Jungle, by Todd Balf
U.S. Navy Lt. Isaac Strain's 1854 expedition into the Darién Gap was one of the first to
explore the remote, seductive jungle and, without question, one of the unluckiest. They
were unable to obtain native guides. They didn't carry enough provisions. Existing maps
were a joke. Vampire bats drank their blood when they were sleeping. Worms hatched
under their skin and starting eating their flesh. And so on. To read about their ordeal is
horrendous and thrilling and all the other things you want a book like this to be.
Crown 2003.
Sea of Glory, by Nathaniel Philbrick
The Wilkes Expedition spent four years at sea during the 1830s exploring the coastline of
Antarctica, mapping the Fiji Islands, and, most importantly, collecting the ethnographic
material that eventually became the original inventory of the Smithsonian Institute. In this
daring author's follow up to Revenge of the Whale and In the Heart of the Sea, he recounts
the many challenges the expedition faced—ships lost to storms, men lost to flesh-eating Fiji
Islanders—and, especially, he brings to life the challenge that was Captain Charles Wilkes
himself. Philbrick has done with him what Dickens did with Fagin in Oliver Twist: He has
made a character as fascinating as a nest of vipers.
Viking 2003.
Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow, by Maria Coffey
Twenty years after her boyfriend Joe Tasker's death on Everest's Northeast Ridge, Coffey
writes this sad yet somehow ecstatic book about what such tragedies mean to the loved
ones of mountaineers. She traveled widely and spoke to a great many people—wives,
husbands, children, parents, and the climbers themselves. It's very moving stuff, and the
book raises basic issues about extreme adventure and the risks it entails. Do these risk
takers have a right? Wisely, Coffey doesn't try to answer the question. She just goes on
telling stories, filling the book with them—tragic, heroic, compelling, exalting.
St. Martin's Press, 2003.
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, by John Gilmette
Reading this book is like watching a Komodo dragon eat a tethered goat. Paraguay, the
book's subject, is isolated, ignorant, and completely bizarre. Bleak thoughts and
observations thread through the book, but this is part of its charm. And so it goes, tale
after tale, conquistadores and Nazis, whores and cannibals, all of them rather awful, all of
them splendidly rendered.
Knopf, 2004.