That will teach you to keep your mouth shut' - Ernest Hemingway Over a boozy Sunday lunch, flatmates James Adair and Ben Stenning made a promise to row across the ocean. At first they considered the Pacific, then the Atlantic, but once James Cracknell and Ben Fogle completed the high-profile Atlantic Rowing Race, their thoughts turned to the Indian Ocean, longer and tougher than the Atlantic and having seen fewer people row across its waters than have walked on the Moon. After years of planning and fund raising, they were ready to launch in Spring 2011. Neither James nor Ben had any rowing or sailing experience. To add to this, James had contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome at the age of 14, which had locked his body into total paralysis for three months (while his mind had remained completely active) and which had left him with paralysed feet. This was a challenge that neither man should have ever considered.

    78 days, 14 hours and 40 minutes earlier he set off from the same point, beginning his attempt to circumnavigate the world in record time. Covering more than 18,000 miles and cycling through some of the harshest conditions one man and his bicycle can endure, Mark made history. He smashed two Guinness World Records and beat the previous record by an astonishing 45 days. Around the World in 80 Days is the story of Mark’s amazing achievement - one which redefines the limits of human endurance. It is also an insight into the mind of an elite athlete and the physical limits of the human body, as well as a kaleidoscopic tour of the world from a very unique perspective; inspired by Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel, Mark begins his journey in Paris and cycles through Europe, Russia, Mongolia and China. He then crosses Australia, rides up through New Zealand and across North America before the final 'sprint finish' thorough Portugal, Spain and France, all at over 200 miles a day. This is the story of a quite remarkable adventure, by a quite remarkable man.

    Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance. In the jungles of Papua New Guinea, she loses herself -- literally -- to an Australian tour guide; in Cairo, she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, only to discover the beginning of a pattern that will characterize her life over the long-term: while long-distance relationships work well for her, traditional relationships do not.Wanderlust, however, is more than a chronological conquest of men and countries: at its core, it's a journey of self-discovery. In the course of her travels, Eaves finds herself and the sense of home she's been lacking since childhood -- and she sheds light on a growing culture of young women who have the freedom and inclination to define their own, increasingly global, lifestyles, unfettered by traditional roles and conventions of past generations of women.

    For seventeen days, he and his team of dogs endured blinding wind, snowstorms, frostbite, dogfights, moose attacks, sleeplessness, hallucinations--and the relentless push to go on. Winterdance is the enthralling account of a stunning wilderness journey of discovery and transformation (Chicago Tribune), lived and told by the best author of man-against-nature adventures writing today (Publishers Weekly).

    It was the end. When it came to my dad though, no amount of rational thought could outweigh my feelings. I watched the footage over and over again, trying to validate my hopes and dreams, believing there was a minute possibility he made it out of the building alive.”After his father died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center, nine-year-old Matthew John Bocchi began an obsessive quest to find out exactly how he died. He researched video tapes, pictures, blogs, anything that could potentially answer the question looming in his mind: was his father one of the jumpers? In the first memoir told by a child of 9/11, Matt intimately delves into the psychological and emotional torment that ensued after his father’s death. With heartbreaking vulnerability, he details how his incessant quest resulted in a devastating act of violence that stripped his innocence as a young man. As Matt spirals down a bottomless pit of drug abuse, he willfully risks his life in search of the next high—all in an attempt to forget his past.  Now at twenty-eight years old and sober, he recounts his unique story—one full of heartbreak and despair, grief and uncertainty, but most importantly, happiness and hope. The lesson he teaches us is clear but intricate: No matter how far you fall, you can always rise again. No matter how far you stray, you can always find your way home. And no matter how wide you sway, you can always pick up the pieces and stand tall.

    Then, in the space of a night, everything that was normal about her life changed. Her police officer father, John, was driving to his midnight shift when someone pulled up alongside and leveled a shotgun at his window. The blasts that followed tore through his face and left him clinging to life. Overnight, the Busbys went from being the "family next door" to one under twenty-four-hour armed guard, with police escorts to and from school and no contact with friends. Worse, the shooter was still on the loose, and it seemed only a matter of time before he'd come after John-or someone else in the family-again. With their lives unraveling around them and few choices remaining for a future that could ever be secure, the Busby family left everything and everyone they had ever known...and simply disappeared.As told by both father and daughter, this is a harrowing, at times heartbreaking, account of a shooting and its aftermath-even as it shows a young girl trying to make sense of the unthinkable and the triumph of a family's bravery in the face of crisis.

    He has made a life out of doing things the hard way. The result is a book that dives headfirst into adventure and experience. Jenkins transports the reader with him as he climbs the ice-encrusted Italian Ridge of the Matterhorn, sea kayaks from battlefield to battlefield along the Turkish coast of Gallipoli, sneaks across Tibet to reach Buddhism's holiest lake, descends unexplored canyons in Australia, and traverses the war-torn Simen Mountains of northern Ethiopia. If you've ever dreamed of escaping, lighting out for the unknown, read this book. In a world increasingly vicarious and secondhand, we all long to make decisions that matter, decisions of consequence. This is precisely what the outdoor life still requires. The Hard Way is a book about doing, not watching -- about leaping before you look.

    So they rent out their California home--dog and cat included--and embark on a yearlong trip around the world. The couple is swept up in the adventure of a lifetime: traversing the Sahara on camels, trekking in the Himalayas, scrambling over Cambodian temples, crossing the Andes, scaling a New Zealand glacier.The book traces the odyssey in forty-eight colorful dispatches from six continents. Whether barreling across India with a former tank driver at the wheel, getting clipped by Vietnam's oldest barber, touring a notorious Bolivian prison with inmates as guides, or braving a cyclone in Fiji on a rubber raft, McIntyre taps his signature wit to convey the joys, perils, and frustrations of prolonged travel. He also writes eloquently of such touching moments as flying kites with a boy in Indonesia and sleeping under the stars in Morocco.Funny, heartwarming, and full of expert tips, The Wander Year will inspire and entertain veteran and armchair travelers alike."A superb writer."--Los Angeles Times"A reader's dream."--San Diego Union-Tribune

    A desert, by definition, lacks it, but when water does come, it comes in torrential, sometimes devastating abundance. Childs, a thirtysomething desert rat with a vast knowledge of the Southwest's remote corners, knows this fact well. "Most rain falling anywhere but the desert comes slow enough that it is swallowed by the soil without comment," he observes. "Desert rains, powerful and sporadic, tend to hit the ground, gather into floods, and are gone before the water can sink five inches into the ground."The travels that Childs recounts in this vivid narrative take him from places sometimes parched, sometimes swimming, from the depths of the Grand Canyon to the dry limestone tanks of the lava-strewn Sonoran Desert. As he travels, Childs gives a close reading of the desert landscape ("the moral," he writes at one point, "is that if you know the land and its maps, you might live"), observing the rocks, plants, animals, and people that call it home. Some of his adventures will remind readers of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire—save that Childs writes without Abbey's bluster, and with a measured lyricism that well suits the achingly lovely back canyons and cactus forests of the Southwest. By turns travelogue, ecological treatise, and meditative essay, Childs's book will speak to anyone who has spent time under desert skies, wondering when the next drop of rain might fall.

    He’s been bitten by twenty-six venomous snakes, been stung by three stingrays, and survived a near-fatal scorpion sting while deep in the Amazon jungle. He’s received more than four hundred stitches and broken twenty-three bones, including breaking his back in three places, and had to learn how to walk again. But when you research only the venom you yourself have collected, the adventures—and danger—never stop.Imagine a three-week-long first date in Siberia catching venomous water shrews with the daughter of a Russian war hero; a wedding attended by Eastern European prime ministers and their machine-gun-wielding bodyguards and snakes; or leading a team to Antarctica that results in the discovery of four new species of venomous octopi. Bryan’s discoveries have radically reshaped views on venom evolution and contributed to the creation of venom-based life-saving medications. In pursuit of venom, he has traveled the world collecting samples from Indonesia to Mexico, Germany, and Brazil. He’s encountered venomous creatures of all kinds, including the Malaysian king cobra, the Komodo dragon, and the brush-footed trapdoor spider. Bryan recounts his lifelong passion for studying the world’s most venomous creatures in this outlandish, captivating memoir, where he and danger are never far apart.

    “For years I’d made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.” But somehow she had become dependent in quite another way. “I had fallen into the habit of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me.” But who was she away from the people and things that defined her? In this exquisite book, Steinbach searches for the answer to this question in some of the most beautiful and exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soul mate; Oxford, where she takes a course on the English village; and Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married. Beautifully illustrated with postcards from Steinbach’s journeys, this revealing and witty book transports you into a fascinating inner and outer journey, an unforgettable voyage of discovery.

    She was a young, overweight college professor with a pack-and-a-half a day habit and a bad attitude. He was her boss, and an accomplished Ironman triathlete. She was a whiner, he was a hardass. He had his shit together, she most assuredly did not. Yet Susan and Carlos shared a deep and abiding friendship that traversed life, sport, illness, death, and everything in between.Amusing and poignant, Life's Too Short To Go So F*cking Slow is about running and triathlon, growth and heartbreak, and an epic friendship that went the distance.

    Wide-Open World follows the Marshall family as they volunteer their way around the globe, living in a monkey sanctuary in Costa Rica, teaching English in rural Thailand, and caring for orphans in India. There’s a name for this kind of endeavor—voluntourism—and it might just be the future of travel.  Oppressive heat, grueling bus rides, backbreaking work, and one vicious spider monkey . . . Best family vacation ever!   John Marshall needed a change. His twenty-year marriage was falling apart, his seventeen-year-old son was about to leave home, and his fourteen-year-old daughter was lost in cyberspace. Desperate to get out of a rut and reconnect with his family, John dreamed of a trip around the world, a chance to leave behind, if only just for a while, routines and responsibilities. He didn’t have the money for resorts or luxury tours, but he did have an idea that would make traveling the globe more affordable and more meaningful than he’d ever imagined: The family would volunteer their time and energy to others in far-flung locales.  Wide-Open World is the inspiring true story of the six months that changed the Marshall family forever. Once they’d made the pivotal decision to go, John and his wife, Traca, quit their jobs, pulled their kids out of school, and embarked on a journey that would take them far off the beaten path, and far out of their comfort zones.   Here is the totally engaging, bluntly honest chronicle of the Marshalls’ life-altering adventure from Central America to East Asia. It was no fairy tale. The trip offered little rest, even less relaxation, and virtually no certainty of what was to come. But it did give the Marshalls something far more valuable: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to conquer personal fears, strengthen family bonds, and find their true selves by helping those in need. In the end, as John discovered, he and his family did not change the world. It was the world that changed them.Advance praise for Wide-Open World  “For anyone who has ever imagined what it would be like to pack up, unplug, pull the kids out of school, and travel around the world, this volunteer adventure is your ticket. Wide-Open World will move, engage, and inspire you, even if you never leave the couch.”—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train“John Marshall has done it, written a big, honest, charming memoir about the dream—and reality—of escaping it all, on a round-the-globe boondoggle with your family. In Wide-Open World, the pleasures are deep, the sentiments revelatory, and the voice true and funny. And best of all, you won’t have to leave your armchair, or upend your life, to know what it feels like to make your way, with kids, out there in the beautiful, churning world.”—Michael Paterniti, author of Love and Other Ways of Dying  “Volunteering may not change the world—but as we learn in Wide-Open World, it will change you and your family. Let this heartwarming, hilarious, poignant book be your inspiration: Dare to follow in the Marshall family’s footsteps, and give more of your time, effort, and heart than you ever thought possible—and watch the blessings flow!”—Sy Montgomery, author of The Good Good Pig   “Compelling, richly detailed, and often laugh-out-loud funny.”—Gwen Cooper, author of Homer’s Odyssey

    To the horror of her traditional, ethnic family, she divorces her husband of fifteen years, dusts off her wildlife biology degree, and flees to Moose, Wyoming for a job at Grand Teton National Park. In these rugged mountains, unexpected lessons from nature and wildlife guide her journey as she creates a new life for herself. Set against the dramatic backdrop and quirky culture of Jackson Hole, this beautifully written memoir is a thoughtful, often humorous account of a woman’s bumbling quest for purpose, redemption, and love through wilderness adventure, solitude, and offbeat human connections.

    Instead, it is a path, a constantly evolving journey that directs where you go, how you live, and who you are.In 2006, Liz Clark decided to follow the path that surfing, sailing and love of the ocean had presented to her. Embarking on an adventure that most only dream of taking, she set sail from Santa Barbara, solo, headed to the South Pacific. Nine years later she is still following her path in search of surf and self and the beauty and inspiration that lies beyond the beaten path.In stories overflowing with epic waves and at the whim of the weather, Liz captures her voyage in gripping detail, telling tales of self awareness, solitude, connection to the earth, and really great surf spots.