Dead Reckoning: Navigating a Life on the Last Frontier, Courting Tragedy on Its High Seas


Dave Atcheson - 2014
    It’s a story of a world peopled by those who often live on the frayed edges of society, who shun the world in which most people thrive. It’s a story in which college students and “fish hippies” work in canneries alongside survivalists, rednecks, religious freaks, and deckhands with damning secrets in dangerous waters, driven by the need to feed an insatiable appetite for adventure.This is the heart of the world Atcheson found himself in at the age of eighteen. Having never even seen the ocean, he took his first job on the Lancer with Darwin Wood, a man so confounding, so complex and so frightening, that it’s hard to believe Atcheson walked away from that job unscathed. Forced to buddy up with a murderer in order to cope, Atcheson began to question his deeply ingrained ideas of success and status. The resulting conflict would finally resolve itself fifteen years later, in the least likely of places: on the Bering Sea, aboard a boat in peril, during a night of terror that would reshape the lives of everyone involved.Reminiscent of The Perfect Storm and Into the Wild, Dead Reckoning is not only an intimate look at life at sea, but also an insider’s view into one of Alaska’s small communities, and the myriad of upstarts, dropouts, and rogues that color its landscape.

Lance Armstrong's War: One Man's Battle Against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France


Daniel Coyle - 2005
    Now with a new epilogue covering Armstrong's quest to win an 8th Tour de France, this “intimate, insightful, unflinching look at the greatest athlete of our time” (Jon Krakauer) explores the remarkable drive and accomplishments of a controversial champion—a must read for fans of John Feinstein and David Halberstam, as well as readers of Lance Armstrong’s own It’s Not About the Bike and Every Second Counts.

Cop Out!: The End Of My Brilliant Career In The New Zealand Police


Glenn Wood - 1999
    Constable Wood was a disaster waiting to happen. He was the sort of cop who was happier helping little old ladies across the street (even when they were quite content where they were) than pursuing the perpetrators of dreadful deeds. But if he failed to strike fear into the hearts of the criminal underworld, his superiors had a real problem on their hands. Never before had they been forced to deal with such a well-meaning but accident-prone officer and they hoped, fervently, never to see his like again. From his early encounters with a less-than-impressed public, through the terrifying days of the Springbok Tour riots, to the gradual realisation that perhaps he wasn’t cut out for life on the beat, this is the hilarious story of a young cop who created a severe disturbance in the force.

Fifty Places to Bike Before You Die: Biking Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations


Chris Santella - 2012
    Biking has grown increasingly popular in recent years, as both a leisure and an extreme exercise activity, and Santella covers trips for cyclists of every level. Fifty Places to Bike covers environments as varied as the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia, the Indochina Trail in Vietnam, and the urban jungle of New York City. With a healthy mix of international and national locations, the 50 chapters capture the breathtaking vistas cyclists will enjoy around the world. As always, the places are brought to life with more than 40 stunning color photographs.Praise for Fifty Places to Bike Before You Die:“OMG views, killer hills and open road—the routes in Fifty Places to Bike Before You Die (in bookstores this month) have everything a pedal pusher could ask for.” —Fitness magazine “If you know someone who can't view a landscape without visualizing themselves traversing it on two wheels, Fifty Places to Bike Before You Die is a sound gift choice.” —The San Francisco Chronicle “Fifty Places to Bike Before You Die gets adventurous cyclists going in the right direction.” —The Boston Globe “50 chapters capture breathtaking cycling trails around the world.” —Metrosource magazine

Full Gas: How to Win a Bike Race – Tactics from Inside the Peloton


Peter Cossins - 2018
    Now a minute’s delay thanks to a puncture could ruin a rider’s chances over a three-week race and the sport is described as nothing less than chess on wheels. The intricacies and complexities of cycling are what makes it so appealing: an eye for opportunity and a quick mind are just as crucial to success as a 'big engine' or good form. So how do you win a bike race? How do you cope with crosswinds, cobbles, elbows-out sprints, weaving your way through a teeming peloton? Why are steady nerves one of the best weapons in a rider’s arsenal and breakaway artists to be revered? Where do you see the finest showcase of tactical brilliance? Peter Cossins takes us on to the team buses to hear pro cyclists and directeurs sportifs explain their tactics: when it went right, when they got it wrong – from sprinting to summits, from breakaways to bluffing.Hectic, thrilling, but sometimes impenetrable – watching a bike race can baffle as much as entertain. Full Gas is the essential guide to make sense of all things peloton.

One-Way Ticket: Nine Lives on Two Wheels


Jonathan Vaughters - 2019
    From his early years as a keen cyclist in his hometown in Colorado to his unflinching rite of passage as a professional rider with US Postal to his elevation as one of cycling's most resilient, ethical and intelligent team bosses, the highs and lows of his career have mirrored those of the sport itself. Vaughters has had a front-row seat for most of the major events in cycling over the past three decades. He was both a former teammate of Lance and a leading witness against him. And he went on to renounce doping and start the first pro cycling team to dedicate itself to clean riding, which has grown into one of the most successful teams competing today and started a movement that has swept across the sport.This is also not simply a story of races won and lost: Vaughters shows readers how he navigated the complex, international business of building Slipstream into a world-class cycling team. Over the past decade, he has led the sport out of the scandal-plagued Armstrong era. By presenting the world with a team made of talented racers built around a rigorous approach to clean racing, he set a new standard within cycling that has since spread across the peloton. Written from the unique perspective of both a racer and a team manager, One-Way Ticket gives the complete story of what it takes to build a winning team and repair the reputation of a sport.

Cross Country: Fifteen Years and Ninety Thousand Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America Lewis and Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My Wife, My Mother-In-Law, Two Kids and Enough Coffee to Kill an Elephant


Robert Sullivan - 2006
    Here, Sullivan, who has driven cross-country more than two dozen times, recounts his family's annual summer migration from Oregon to New York. His story of moving his family back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast (and various other migrations), is replete with all the minor disasters, humor, and wonderful coincidences that characterize life on the road, not to mention life.As he drives, Sullivan ponders his nation-crossing predecessors, such as legendary duo Lewis and Clark, as well the more improbable heroes of America's unending urge to cross itself: Carl Fisher, an Indianapolis bicycle maker who founded the Indy 500, dropped cars off of buildings and imagined the first cross-country road; Emily Post, who, before her life as an etiquette writer, was one of the first cross-country chroniclers; and the race car drivers who, appalled by the invention of seatbelts and speed limits, ran an underground cross-country car race in the 1970s known as the Cannonball Run. Sullivan meets Beat poets who are devotees of Jack Kerouac, cross-country icon, and plays golf on an abandoned coal mine. And, in his trademark celebration of the mundane, Sullivan investigates everything from the history of the gas pump to the origins of fast food and rest stops. Cross Country tells the tales that come from fifteen years of driving across the country (and all around it) with two kids and everything that two kids and two parents take when driving in a car from one coast to another, over and over, driving to see the way the road made America and America made the road.

Follow Me to Alaska: A true story of one couple’s adventure adjusting from life in a cul-de-sac in El Paso, Texas, to a cabin off-grid in the wilderness of Alaska


Ann Parker - 2020
    They left life as they knew it behind to start fresh in the land of the Last Frontier.Their cabin on Cub Lake was only accessible by bush plane in the summer or snow machine during the winter, making life challenging. They knew their learning curve would be steep. What they didn't realize was living on a homestead in the wilderness of Alaska would make them face obstacles they had never experienced before.This new chapter forced them to take every skill that they had learned in their lives to the next level. Hunting, fishing, gardening, and flying would all become key to thriving off-the-grid. Arctic temperatures and wild animals in the Alaska bush provided countless adventures. These tales may make you laugh, make you cry, and might possibly inspire you to follow your own dreams!While enjoying the majestic nature surrounding them, they also learned to work together like never before. The two of them have dealt with everything from crazy chickens to bears, and ultimately even looked death squarely in the eyes. Throughout it all, Ann knew there was no place she would rather be than with Shon when he suggested, "Follow Me to Alaska."

Chiseled: A Memoir of Identity, Duplicity, and Divine Wine


Danuta Pfeiffer - 2015
    
 This is a story of navigating identities through a remarkable life. Danuta Pfeiffer was an unwed teenage mother escaping to the tundra of Alaska; a journalist who inadvertently became a television evangelist with a ringside seat to a presidential campaign; a wife c aught in a web of deceit and substance abuse. Through it all, she clings to her father’s legacy, sustained by his tales of fortitude and endurance when faced with the horrors of war. Finally, living happily as a winemaker in Oregon, she finds she must once more reinvent herself, when during a sojourn to the Carpathian Mountains of Poland she uncovers long-buried family secrets. Chiseled is the story of one woman brave enough to chip away at a life of lies and finally arrive at a shining core of truth.

Wal-Mart Book of Ethics Abridged Edition


R.A. Wilson - 2012
    Why else would you be looking at this book? If you have ever wanted to see behind the front lines of retail, this is the book for you. If you want to validate your own experiences in retail, this is the book for you. If you just want to laugh at humorous things from funny people, this is the book for you. Packed full of true short stories from working in one of these super stores, only one conclusion can be reached in the end: Wal-Mart is the craziest place on Earth!

The Hour: Sporting immortality the hard way


Michael Hutchinson - 2006
    It's the only cycling record that matters: one man and his bike against the clock in a quest for pure speed. No teammates, no rivals, no tactics, no gears, no brakes. Just one simple question - in sixty minutes, how far can you go?Michael Hutchinson had a plan. He was going to add his name to the list of record-holders, cycling's supermen. But how does a man who became a professional athlete by accident achieve sporting immortality? It didn't sound too hard. All he needed was a couple of hand-tooled bike frames, the most expensive wheels money could buy, a support team of crack professionals, a small pot of glue, and a credit card wired to someone else's bank account. Still, getting the glue wasn't a problem...Michael Hutchinson became a full-time cyclist in 2000 after becoming disillusioned with an academic career. Over the following six years he has won more than twenty national titles, and the gold medal in the Masters' Pursuit World Championships. He is now a writer and journalist (and cyclist) and lives in south London.

50 Shades of the USA: One woman's 11,000 mile cycling adventure through every state of America


Anna McNuff - 2018
    It was almost a whisper. ‘What are you doing here?’ it said. ‘You are building a career, Anna,’ came the reply from another more sinister voice. ‘But are you building a life?’ said the soft voice again. And for that I had no answer." Disillusioned with corporate London life and with no previous experience as a long-distance cyclist, Anna decides to clamber atop a beautiful pink bicycle (named Boudica) and set out on an 11,000-mile journey on her own, through each and every state of the USA. Dodging floods, blizzards and electrical storms, she pedals side by side with mustangs of the Wild West, through towering redwood forests, past the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and on to the volcanos of Hawaii. Along the way, she meets record-breaking grandmas, sings with Al Green at a gospel service and does her best to avoid becoming a grizzly bear's dinner. 50 Shades of the USA is a down-to-earth, heartfelt and hilarious account of an adventure through a country well-known, but far less well-understood. It is a stunning tale of self-discovery told through the eyes of a woman who couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to life, and more to America too.

The Boy from the Wild


Peter Meyer - 2017
     Peter Meyer grew up on an African game reserve. His idyllic childhood was spent running wild in the bush with Zulu friends and other free spirits. His adventures in the wilderness honed his character, nurtured by an inspirational father who taught him to believe that everything is possible. Before he had turned eight he had survived Rhino attacks, close encounters with Buffalo and Wildebeest — and the terror of twice being bitten by snakes. His pets were a baby Elephant, Warthogs and an Ostrich that frequented his backyard. He lived in a world where beauty was tempered by daily struggles for survival. He discovered that the reality of the bush is often heart-breaking, such as when an Nyala doe that he had hand-reared was taken by predators. He learned through first-hand experience that the cycle of life on Africa’s feral outbacks can be as unforgiving as it is magnificent. These were the key lessons from the wilds of Africa that he took with him when his family left the continent; from school days in England where his tough upbringing resulted in being a top sportsman, to studying at an exclusive Swiss hotel school and becoming one of the youngest directors in the Hilton group, managing exotic resorts in Jamaica and the Middle East. He was on top of the world when everything came crashing down due to tragedy. Drawing on resilience learned in the African bush, he started to rebuild his life, becoming an actor and model, clawing his way up in one of the most critically demanding industries in the world. This is an inspiring true story of living the dream — a dream nurtured by the freedom and self-reliance of growing up wild in Africa.

The Best Medicine: Tales of Humor and Hope from a Small-Town Doctor


Walt Larimore - 2020
    Walt Larimore moved his young family to Kissimmee, Florida, to start a small-town medical practice in 1985, he had no idea he was embarking on an enterprise that would change his life in ways both large and small. But there's no telling what you'll run into as a family physician in a rural, small-town community.Perfect for anyone yearning for a simpler, slower pace of life, as well as fans of Dr. Larimore's popular Bryson City series, The Best Medicine is a tender and insightful collection of stories chronicling one young doctor's passage from inexperience to maturity as a physician, husband, father, and community member. Filled with characters colorful and crusty, warm-hearted and hot-headed, witty and winsome, these captivating stories glow with warmth, love, and humor. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll wish Dr. Larimore was your doctor.

The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France


Daniel de Visé - 2018
    Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback almost without parallel in professional sports. In summer 1989, he again won the Tour—arguably the world’s most grueling athletic contest—by the almost impossibly narrow margin of 8 seconds over another French legend, Laurent Fignon. It remains the closest Tour de France in history.The Comeback chronicles the life of one of America’s greatest athletes, from his roots in Nevada and California to the heights of global fame, to a falling out with his own family and a calamitous confrontation with Lance Armstrong over allegations the latter was doping—a campaign LeMond would wage on principle for more than a decade before Armstrong was finally stripped of his own Tour titles. With the kind of narrative drive that propels books like Moneyball, and a fierce attention to detail, Daniel de Visé reveals the dramatic, ultra-competitive inner world of a sport rarely glimpsed up close, and builds a compelling case for LeMond as its great American hero.