Book picks similar to
The Divide: a 2700 mile search for answers by Nathan Doneen
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The Kingdom by the Sea
Paul Theroux - 1983
The result is a candid, funny, perceptive, and opinionated travelogue of his journey and his findings.
Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey
Colby Buzzell - 2011
Recounting his five-month journey through the country, from its thriving coastlines to its rust-belt wrecks, Buzzell reveals a paradoxical landscape of American dreams both achieved and broken, manifest destinies claimed and refuted, and community ties pulled apart and patched together. In the tradition of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, Buzzell’s Lost in America uncovers the stark realities of our national character even as it explores the deepest questions of identity, unity, and fatherhood.
West with the Night
Beryl Markham - 1942
Beryl Markham’s life story is a true epic. Not only did she set records and break barriers as a pilot, she shattered societal expectations, threw herself into torrid love affairs, survived desperate crash landings—and chronicled everything. A contemporary of Karen Blixen (better known as Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa), Markham left an enduring memoir that soars with astounding candor and shimmering insights. A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She trained as a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Markham’s successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all told here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed as “one of the greatest adventure books of all time” by Newsweek and “the sort of book that makes you think human beings can do anything” by the New York Times, West with the Night remains a powerful testament to one of the iconic lives of the twentieth century.
Eat, Sleep, Ride
Paul Howard - 2011
Still, this isn't just any mountain-bike race. This is the Tour Divide.The Tour Divide race follows a fixed course called the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, crossing the Continental Divide from Banff, Alberta, through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and ending in Antelope Wells, New Mexico. The Great Divide route is more than 2,700 miles: 500 miles longer than the Tour de France and involves more than 200,000 feet of ascent--the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest seven times.The other problem is that Howard has never owned a mountain bike--and how will training on the South Downs in southern England prepare him for sleeping rough in the Rockies? What's more, the efficient backup team that helped Howard in the Tour, his dad, will be absent. Undaunted, Howard swaps the smooth tarmac roads of France for the mud, snow, and ice of the Tour Divide, fending off grizzly bears, mountain lions, and moose. Buzzing roadside fans are replaced by buzzing mosquitoes. Worse is the unshakeable fear that he might have to earn his wild west stripes by drinking whiskey with a cowboy.Entertaining and engaging, Eat, Sleep, Ride will appeal to avid cyclers, ultra cycling fans, and readers of adventure travel narratives with a humorous twist.
How to Be a Family: The Year I Dragged My Kids Around the World to Find a New Way to Be Together
Dan Kois - 2019
Busy professionals living in the D.C. suburbs, they scheduled their children's time wisely, and when they weren't arguing over screen time, the Kois family-Dan, his wife Alia, and their two pre-teen daughters-could each be found searching for their own happiness. But aren't families supposed to achieve happiness together?In this eye-opening, heartwarming, and very funny family memoir, the fractious, loving Kois' go in search of other places on the map that might offer them the chance to live away from home-but closer together. Over a year the family lands in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and small-town Kansas. The goal? To get out of their rut of busyness and distractedness and to see how other families live outside the East Coast parenting bubble.HOW TO BE A FAMILY brings readers along as the Kois girls-witty, solitary, extremely online Lyra and goofy, sensitive, social butterfly Harper-like through the Kiwi bush, ride bikes to a Dutch school in the pouring rain, battle iguanas in their Costa Rican kitchen, and learn to love a town where everyone knows your name. Meanwhile, Dan interviews neighbors, public officials, and scholars to learn why each of these places work the way they do. Will this trip change the Kois family's lives? Or do families take their problems and conflicts with them wherever we go?A journalistic memoir filled with heart, empathy, and lots of whining, HOW TO BE A FAMILY will make readers dream about the amazing adventures their own families might take.
You & a Bike & a Road
Eleanor Davis - 2017
The immediacy of Davis’ comics journal makes for an incredible chronicle of human experience on the most efficient and humane form of human transportation.Eleanor Davis is a cartoonist and illustrator. She lives in Athens, GA and was born in Tucson, Arizona. In 2009, Davis won the Eisner's Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award and was named one of Print magazine's New Visual Artists. In 2015, her book How To Be Happy won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Anthology or Collection.
Naked (in Italy): A Memoir About the Pitfalls of La Dolce Vita
M.E. Evans - 2019
In her late twenties, M.E. Evans hops on a plane to Italy on a mission to change her life and that’s exactly what happens. Unfortunately, personal growth isn’t always easy. In Naked, bestselling author, M.E. Evans tackles the dysfunctional family narrative and travel memoir in a way that is refreshingly honest, painfully vulnerable, and wildly entertaining. If you’ve ever set foot in a foreign country or picked up a travel memoir you probably think you already know what Naked is about: a dreamy personal account of the life-altering beauty that is Italy. And sure, that’s in there, nestled somewhere between the profound grief, bruised ego, debilitating anxiety, chronic depression, vagina paintings, a boyfriend with billowing chest hair and a mother-in-law who forcibly irons your underwear. Evans’ dream of a magical life abroad is marred by forbidden love, the death of her younger brother, and a batshit crazy family, yet she skillfully merges tragedy and humor for a wild emotional journey exploring what it means to be human–flaws and all. Evans’ wit, compassion, and vulnerability make reading this book a rarely authentic and relatable experience. You’ll cry, you’ll cackle, and you’ll want Evans to be your best friend.
The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure
Rachel Friedman - 2011
There she forms an unlikely bond with a free-spirited Australian girl, a born adventurer who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong odyssey that takes her to three continents, fills her life with newfound friends, and gives birth to a previously unrealized passion for adventure. As her journey takes her to Australia and South America, Rachel discovers and embraces her love of travel and unlocks more truths about herself than she ever realized she was seeking. Along the way, the erstwhile good girl finally learns to do something she’s never done before: simply live for the moment.
High Crimes: the Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed
Michael Kodas - 2008
In the years following the publication of Into Thin Air, much has changed on Mount Everest. Among all the books documenting the glorious adventures in mountains around the world, none details how the recent infusion of wealthy climbers is drawing crime to the highest place on the planet. The change is caused both by a tremendous boom in traffic, and a new class of parasitic and predatory adventurer. It's likely that Jon Krakauer would not recognize the camps that he visited on Mount Everest almost a decade ago. This book takes readers on a harrowing tour of the criminal underworld on the slopes of the world's most majestic mountain.High Crimes describes two major expeditions: the tragic story of Nils Antezana, a climber who died on Everest after he was abandoned by his guide; as well as the author's own story of his participation in the Connecticut Everest Expedition, guided by George Dijmarescu and his wife and climbing partner, Lhakpa Sherpa. Dijmarescu, who at first seemed well-intentioned and charming, turned increasingly hostile to his own wife, as well as to the author and the other women on the team. By the end of the expedition, the three women could not travel unaccompanied in base camp due to the threat of violence. Those that tried to stand against the violence and theft found that the worst of the intimidation had followed them home to Connecticut. Beatings, thefts, drugs, prostitution, coercion, threats, and abandonment on the highest slopes of Everest and other mountains have become the rule rather than the exception. Kodas describes many such experiences, and explores the larger issues these stories raise with thriller-like intensity.
The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest
Anatoli Boukreev - 1997
Everest disaster vanished into thin air, one man had the courage to bring them down alive... On May 10, 1996, two commercial expeditions headed by expert leaders attempted to scale the world's largest peak. But things went terribly wrong. Crowded conditions, bad judgement, and a bitter storm stopped many climbers in their tracks. Others were left for dead, or stranded on the frigid mountain. Anatoli Boukreev, head climbing guide for the Mountain Madness expedition, stepped into the heart of the storm and brought three of his clients down alive. Here is his amazing story-of an expedition fated for disaster, of the blind ambition that drives people to attempt such dangerous ventures, and of a modern-day hero, who risked his own life to save others..
Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta
Richard Grant - 2015
Dispatches from Pluto is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place. Imagine A Year In Provence with alligators and assassins, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with hunting scenes and swamp-to-table dining.On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto, Richard and his girlfriend, Mariah, embark on a new life. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters—blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Grant brings an adept, empathetic eye to the fascinating people he meets, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Reporting from all angles as only an outsider can, Grant also delves deeply into the Delta’s lingering racial tensions. He finds that de facto segregation continues. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families—and good reasons for hope.Dispatches from Pluto is a book as unique as the Delta itself. It’s lively, entertaining, and funny, containing a travel writer’s flair for in-depth reporting alongside insightful reflections on poverty, community, and race. It’s also a love story, as the nomadic Grant learns to settle down. He falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home. Mississippi, Grant concludes, is the best-kept secret in America.
The Penguin Lessons
Tom Michell - 2015
When the bird refuses to leave Tom's side, the young teacher has no choice but to take it with him and look after it. This is their story.
Three Weeks With My Brother
Nicholas Sparks - 2004
With a wife and five small children, a hectic schedule, and a new book due to his publishers, Nicholas Sparks was busy with his usual routine. The colorful mailer, however, described something very different: a tour to some of the most exotic places on Earth. Slowly, an idea took hold in Nicholas's mind and heart. In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother, Micah, set off on a three-week trip around the globe. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at thirty-seven and thirty-eight respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family. And as they voyaged to the lost city of Machu Picchu high in the Andes. . . to mysterious Easter Island. . . to Ayers Rock in the Australian outback. . . and across the vast Indian subcontinent, the ultimate story of their lives would unfold. Against the backdrop of the wonders of the world and often overtaken by their feelings, daredevil Micah and the more serious, introspective Nicholas recalled their rambunctious childhood adventures and the tragedies that tested their faith. And in the process, they discovered startling truths about loss, love and hope. Narrated with irrepressible humor and rare candor, and including personal photographs, Three Weeks with my Brother reminds us to embrace life with all its uncertainties. . . and most of all, to cherish the joyful times, both small and momentous, and the wonderful people who make them possible.Did You Know?---Three Weeks With My Brother is Nicholas's second work of non-fiction? (The first was Wokini, written with Olympic Gold Medalist Billy Mills.)Nicholas and Micah Sparks wrote the book together from separate coasts by talking on the phone and faxing drafts back and forth?The trip around the world was part of a Notre Dame alumni package?
A Dream Worth Living: Finding Strength in the Depths of Struggle Along the Continental Divide
Andy Amick - 2017
In the span of a few hours, you can go from the brink of exhaustion in the worst possible conditions to an explosion of sunshine, amazing people, and breathtaking scenery.” On Friday the 13th, under a full moon and falling rain, Andy Amick completed the first day of the 2014 Tour Divide race. Even with a year of training and preparation, the the physical and mental challenges of the race pushed him further than he thought possible. During the 2700 mile race from Canada to Mexico, he climbed mountain after mountain, witnessed stunning sunsets, encountered the smiles and hospitality of countless people, crossed paths with a mountain lion, and rode through enough mud to last a lifetime. This is the story of one man’s dream to race the Tour Divide and his determination to reach the finish.
In Patagonia
Bruce Chatwin - 1977
Fueled by an unmistakable lust for life and adventure and a singular gift for storytelling, Chatwin treks through “the uttermost part of the earth”— that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome—in search of almost forgotten legends, the descendants of Welsh immigrants, and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. An instant classic upon its publication in 1977, In Patagonia is a masterpiece that has cast a long shadow upon the literary world.