Book picks similar to
Lost on Everest: The Search for Mallory & Irvine by Peter Firstbrook
non-fiction
mountaineering
history
everest
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!
Jesse Ventura - 2008
His previous books, I Ain't Got Time to Bleed and Do I Stand Alone?, were both national bestsellers. Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! is the story of his controversial gubernatorial years and his life since deciding not to seek a second term as governor in 2002. Written with award-winning author Dick Russell at a secluded location on Mexico's Baja Peninsula, Ventura's bestselling book reveals for the first time why he left politics—and why he is now considering reentering the arena with a possible independent run for the presidency. In a fast-paced and often humorous narrative, Ventura pulls no punches in discussing our corrupt two-party system, the disastrous war in Iraq, and what he suspects really happened on September 11. He provides personal insights into the Clinton and Bush presidencies, and elaborates on the ways in which third parties are rendered impotent by the country's two dominant parties. He reveals the illegal role of the CIA in states like Minnesota, sensitive and up-to-date information on the Blackwater security firm, the story of the American spies who shadowed him on a trade mission to Cuba, and what Fidel Castro told him about who really assassinated President John F. Kennedy. This unique political memoir is a must-read for anyone concerned about the direction that America will take.
The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen
Stephen R. Bown - 2012
In 1900, the four great geographical mysteries—the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, the South Pole, and the North Pole—remained blank spots on the globe. Within twenty years Roald Amundsen would claim all four prizes. Renowned for his determination and technical skills, both feared and beloved by his men, Amundsen is a legend of the heroic age of exploration, which shortly thereafter would be tamed by technology, commerce, and publicity. Féted in his lifetime as an international celebrity, pursued by women and creditors, he died in the Arctic on a rescue mission for an inept rival explorer.Stephen R. Bown has unearthed archival material to give Amundsen's life the grim immediacy of Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World, the exciting detail of The Endurance, and the suspense of a Jon Krakauer tale. The Last Viking is both a thrilling literary biography and a cracking good story.
More Readings From One Man's Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974-1980
Richard Proenneke - 2005
Proenneke--a modern-day Henry David Thoreau--built a cabin in Twin Lakes, Alaska, during the spring of 1968, sparking thirty years of personal growth in which he spent the majority of his time strengthening his relationship with the wilderness around him. Following in the footsteps of One Man's Wilderness, a classic book compiling some of the mountain man's journals, More Readings from One Man's Wilderness chronicles Proenneke's experiences with animals, the elements, park visitors, and observations he made while hiking in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. A master woodcraftsman, a mechanical genius, a tireless hiker with a keen eye, and a journalist, Proenneke's life at Twin Lakes has inspired thousands of readers for decades.Editor John Branson--a longtime friend of Proenneke's and a park historian--ensures that Proenneke's journals from 1974-1980 are kept entirely intact. His colloquial writing is not changed or altered, but Branson's footnotes make his world more approachable by providing a background for names and places that may have otherwise been unknown. Any reader with a love for conservation and true-life wilderness narratives will undoubtedly admire and relish Proenneke's tales of living in the wild.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports--books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
The Lost City of the Monkey God
Douglas Preston - 2017
An ancient curse. A stunning medical mystery. And a pioneering journey into the unknown heart of the world's densest jungle.Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location.Three quarters of a century later, author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease.
Mountain Rescue Doctor: Wilderness Medicine in the Extremes of Nature
Christopher Van Tilburg - 2007
When Dr. Van Tilburg's beeper goes off, the call may take him racing up a mountain peak to rescue an injured hiker, into a blizzard to search for missing skiers, or to a mountain airplane crash scene for body recovery. Dr. Van Tilburg's work requires a unique combination of emergency medicine, survival skills, agility, and extreme sports. In Mountain Rescue Doctor, Van Tilburg shares personal stories of harrowing and suspenseful rescues and recoveries, including the recent Mount Hood disaster, which claimed the lives of three climbers. Mountain Rescue Doctor is an exhilarating tour through the perils of nature and medicine.
Mountain Madness: Scott Fischer, Mount Everest & a Life Lived on High
Robert Birkby - 2008
Before his tragic death in 1996, mountaineer Scott Fischer scaled the highest and most treacherous peaks on Earth and became, for many, an iconic symbol of hubris, audacity and the limits of endurance.
When I Fell From the Sky
Juliane Koepcke - 2011
The Lockheed L-188A Electra, on the way from Lima to Pucallpa, flew directly into a thunderstorm. A strike of lightning left the plane incinerated, and Juliane Diller (Koepcke), still strapped to her plane seat, fell through the night air two miles above the Earth. Her survival is unexplainable and considered a modern day miracle. Her mother was among the 91 dead and Juliane the sole survivor. For 11 days she crawled and walked alone through the jungle, fighting for her survival again with hunger and despair her only companions as maggots ate their way into her wounds.Juliane ultimately survived and went on to live an inspiring life as a scientist continually drawn back to the terrain that threatened to take her. On the 40th anniversary, she shares not only the private moments of her survival and rescue but her life in the wake of the dramatic true story.
Ascent into Hell
Fergus White - 2017
What starts with a trouble-free trek into the Nepalese highlands explodes into a gripping tale of hardship, peril, and adversity. Pushed beyond their physical and mental limits, climbers drop by the wayside. Their primal instincts for survival battle with their dogged resolve to drag themselves to the top of the world. But the focus remains: battle to the summit, and if successful, somehow get back down again. White plunges the reader into a land of subzero temperatures, asphyxiating air, and ever increasing danger. Base Camp life and the world above it come to life in this riveting, true novel. The inner workings of an Everest expedition team and what it takes to climb the highest mountain in the world are laid bare. Some return from the death zone injured. Some do not return at all. Success and failure vie for supremacy throughout. This personal, day-by-day chronicle takes the reader along every step of an Everest climb. A must for climbing enthusiasts, lovers of adventure, and adrenaline junkies; the closing chapters will leave you breathless.Alternate cover edition.ASIN: B07763H6D7
Fastnet, Force 10: The Deadliest Storm in the History of Modern Sailing
John Rousmaniere - 1980
A Force 10, sixty-knot storm swept across the North Atlantic with a speed that confounded forecasters, slamming into the fleet with epic fury. For twenty hours, 2,500 men and women were smashed by forty-foot breaking waves, while rescue helicopters and lifeboats struggled to save them. By the time the race was over, fifteen people had died, twenty-four crews had abandoned ship, five yachts had sunk, 136 sailors had been rescued, and only 85 boats had finished the race. John Rousmaniere was there, and he tells the tragic story of the greatest disaster in the history of yachting as only one who has sailed through the teeth of a killer storm can. With a new introduction by the author.
South with Endurance: Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition 1914-1917
Frank Hurley - 2001
These images, appearing together here for the first time in print, constitute an amazing body of photojournalism created under the most adverse circumstances imaginable. As this book reveals, however, they are far more than visual reportage; they also are images of great artistry that capture the life-and-death drama that was played out against an arctic landscape of magnificent and terrible beauty.The story told here through Frank Hurley's lens began in the summer of 1914, when Shackleton and his crew set sail from England with the intention of being the first to cross Antarctica from one coast to the other, passing through the South Pole on the way. After five months they reached the freezing Weddell Sea and were within sight of land when the Endurance became trapped in the ice pack. Nine months later, the ship was finally crushed, leaving the crew stranded on drifting ice floes at the end of the earth.What followed is one of the most remarkable survival stories in the history of human exploration. Shackleton's men camped on the ice floes for five months before they escaped in their lifeboats and, after a harrowing five-day voyage, reached Elephant Island, a barren outcrop too remote for any hope of rescue. From there, Shackleton and five other volunteers set out for South Georgia Island and miraculously reached their destination after traversing 850 miles of the fiercest seas on the face of the planet in an open lifeboat. There they raised help, and three months later, after three failed attempts, Shackleton made it back to Elephant Island with a rescue ship.Incredibly, every single one of his men survived. Almost as incredible is the fact that so much of this drama was captured on film by Frank Hurley, and that so many of these pictures survived. South with Endurance is the first book to reproduce a total of nearly 500 extant photographs, including many remarkable color images that have never been published before. It is also the first to reproduce the photos to a standard and size that display Hurley's work as the art that it is. Drawn from the archives of the Royal Geographical Society in London, the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, and the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, the photographs are complemented by excerpts from Hurley's diary, a chapter about the expedition itself, a biographical essay, and commentary about Hurley's photographic techniques.
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons
John Wesley Powell - 1895
A bold foray into the heart of the American West’s final frontier, the expedition was achieved without benefit of modern river-running equipment, supplies, or a firm sense of the region’s perilous topography and the attitudes of the native inhabitants towards whites.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Abominable
Dan Simmons - 2013
Everest. By the following year, three climbers -- a British poet and veteran of the Great War, a young French Chamonix guide, and an idealistic young American -- find a way to take their shot at the top. They arrange funding from the grieving Lady Bromley, whose son also disappeared on Mt. Everest in 1924. Young Bromley must be dead, but his mother refuses to believe it and pays the trio to bring him home.Deep in Tibet and high on Everest, the three climbers -- joined by the missing boy's female cousin -- find themselves being pursued through the night by someone . . . or something. This nightmare becomes a matter of life and death at 28,000 feet -- but what is pursuing them? And what is the truth behind the 1924 disappearances on Everest? As they fight their way to the top of the world, the friends uncover a secret far more abominable than any mythical creature could ever be. A pulse-pounding story of adventure and suspense, The Abominable is Dan Simmons at his spine-chilling best.
Life and Limb: A True Story of Tragedy and Survival
Jamie Andrew - 2003
And like Touching the Void, Life and Limb is brilliantly written and utterly un-put-down-able. If ever a tale evokes the phrase life affirming then this is it.' -On the Edge magazine; 'His courage, determination and sense of humour shine through the words of this remarkable book... Life and Limb is a genuinely life-enhancing read.' -Scottish Mountaineer; Jamie Andrew's survival and rescue after five nights trapped by a ferocious storm in 1999 has passed into Alpine legend. It was a miracle that he survived; but Jamie had to come to terms not only with the death of his close friend, Jamie Fisher, who died beside him - but also with the loss of all his limbs to frostbite. Since the accident, Jamie has struggled painfully and successfully to overcome his disabilities; not only has he learnt to walk (and run) on his prosthetic legs, but also to ski, snowboard, paraglide - and even take up his beloved mountaineering again.
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
Tony Horwitz - 2002
Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Confederates in the Attic, works as a sailor aboard a replica of Cook's ship, meets island kings and beauty queens, and carouses the South Seas with a hilarious and disgraceful travel companion, an Aussie named Roger. He also creates a brilliant portrait of Cook: an impoverished farmboy who became the greatest navigator in British history and forever changed the lands he touched. Poignant, probing, antic, and exhilarating, Blue Latitudes brings to life a man who helped create the global village we inhabit today.
Arabian Sands
Wilfred Thesiger - 1959
Educated at Eton and Oxford, Thesiger was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life-"the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets." In the spirit of T. E. Lawrence, he set out to explore the deserts of Arabia, traveling among peoples who had never seen a European and considered it their duty to kill Christian infidels. His now-classic account is invaluable to understanding the modern Middle East.