Oberon
New Member
I thought it might be better to put up a thread dedicated to a type of nonfiction and start with titles culled from the "What do you read?" thread ... If I missed any, please feel feel to add, to comment, or recommend other titles.
Outdoor Adventure
Into Thin Air by Rob Krakauer and The Climb by Boukreev and Weston provide detailed and stirring first-hand accounts of the 1996 tragedy on Mount Everest where five climbers lost their lives.
Dark Shadows Falling by Joe Simpson. Amazon.com: "The author of Touching the Void interweaves stories of his own mountaineering adventures with reflective consideration of recent tragedies on the world's loftiest peaks. As more people take to the mountains--many of them amateurs and dilettantes who can afford to hire guides of varying levels of expertise--the odds of disaster loom ever higher. Simpson weighs in on "summit fever," the treatment of local sherpas, and what he sees as unimaginative "yak routes" up the once-grand mountains."
Hell and High Water, a report on kayaking down Tibet's Tsangpo River by Peter Heller. Per Publisher's Weekly the Tsangpo "cuts a gorge through Tibet many times deeper and steeper than the Grand Canyon; successfully navigating it is akin to snowboarding down Everest." Heller, an extreme kayaker himself, was asked to document the event.
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. Even during relatively "average" weather, the life of eastern seaboard fishermen is filled with risk but bring together the meteorological conditions of October 1991 and you have a harrowing tragedy of man versus the sea, pieced together by a terrific writer.
Exploration
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. PW: "Through the diaries of team members and interviews with survivors, Lansing reconstructs the months of terror and hardship the Endurance crew suffered. In October of 1915, there 'were no helicopters, no Weasels, no Sno-Cats, no suitable planes. Thus their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity. If they were to get out--they had to get themselves out.' How Shackleton did indeed get them out without the loss of a single life is at the heart of Lansing's magnificent true-life adventure tale."
Barrow's Boys: A Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude, and Outright Lunacy
by Fergus Fleming. PW: "While many of the journeys failed entirely, Barrow and his men ultimately opened Africa to the world, discovered Antarctica, and pried apart the mandibles of the Arctic. Many of the missions have gone down among the greatest in history, yet they have never before been collected into one volume ..." "From the wastelands of the Sahara to the northwest passage in Canada this book chronicles the adventures and misadventures of the men who dared to do the impossible. On Shoestring budgets these people went literally to the ends of the earth to fill in 'pointless' parts of the map." (Seth J. Frantzman, on Amazon, really puts it together with this quote.)
Ice Bound : A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Maryanne Vollers, Jerri Nielsen. You probably saw it on the news a few years back, but this is the story of the female physician who was stranded by the Antarctic winter and had to treat herself for breast cancer while ministering to the needs of her colleagues researching the wonders at the bottom of the earth.
Outdoor Adventure
Into Thin Air by Rob Krakauer and The Climb by Boukreev and Weston provide detailed and stirring first-hand accounts of the 1996 tragedy on Mount Everest where five climbers lost their lives.
Dark Shadows Falling by Joe Simpson. Amazon.com: "The author of Touching the Void interweaves stories of his own mountaineering adventures with reflective consideration of recent tragedies on the world's loftiest peaks. As more people take to the mountains--many of them amateurs and dilettantes who can afford to hire guides of varying levels of expertise--the odds of disaster loom ever higher. Simpson weighs in on "summit fever," the treatment of local sherpas, and what he sees as unimaginative "yak routes" up the once-grand mountains."
Hell and High Water, a report on kayaking down Tibet's Tsangpo River by Peter Heller. Per Publisher's Weekly the Tsangpo "cuts a gorge through Tibet many times deeper and steeper than the Grand Canyon; successfully navigating it is akin to snowboarding down Everest." Heller, an extreme kayaker himself, was asked to document the event.
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. Even during relatively "average" weather, the life of eastern seaboard fishermen is filled with risk but bring together the meteorological conditions of October 1991 and you have a harrowing tragedy of man versus the sea, pieced together by a terrific writer.
Exploration
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. PW: "Through the diaries of team members and interviews with survivors, Lansing reconstructs the months of terror and hardship the Endurance crew suffered. In October of 1915, there 'were no helicopters, no Weasels, no Sno-Cats, no suitable planes. Thus their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity. If they were to get out--they had to get themselves out.' How Shackleton did indeed get them out without the loss of a single life is at the heart of Lansing's magnificent true-life adventure tale."
Barrow's Boys: A Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude, and Outright Lunacy
by Fergus Fleming. PW: "While many of the journeys failed entirely, Barrow and his men ultimately opened Africa to the world, discovered Antarctica, and pried apart the mandibles of the Arctic. Many of the missions have gone down among the greatest in history, yet they have never before been collected into one volume ..." "From the wastelands of the Sahara to the northwest passage in Canada this book chronicles the adventures and misadventures of the men who dared to do the impossible. On Shoestring budgets these people went literally to the ends of the earth to fill in 'pointless' parts of the map." (Seth J. Frantzman, on Amazon, really puts it together with this quote.)
Ice Bound : A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Maryanne Vollers, Jerri Nielsen. You probably saw it on the news a few years back, but this is the story of the female physician who was stranded by the Antarctic winter and had to treat herself for breast cancer while ministering to the needs of her colleagues researching the wonders at the bottom of the earth.
With my sons grown up, I don't even know that that club still exists at elementary school level ...