Extreme Classics: The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time

Summer's coming soon. Outdoor adventures are not far away and already in preparation: Hiking, backpacking, camping, mountain biking, river rafting, rock climbing, cross country trekking above treeline with compass, topo maps, and GPS; sailing, wind-surfing, bungee jumping, body surfing, skim boarding, sand castle architecture and construction, hang gliding, para-sailing, horse back riding, dune-bugging on sand dunes, mountain climbing, kayaking, abandoned mine and ghost town exploring, spelunking, peak bagging, four-bying, hot air ballooning, sky diving...

National Geographic came up with this list. I'm unfamiliar with most of the titles, but I'm always up for an adventure, whether it's literally outdoors or vicariously on the page. There's fiction and harrowing non-fiction on the list, the books range as far back to the year 1298 and into the 14th century, all the way up to the late 1990s.

Unfortunately (heads up, up front) only ten out of the 100 selections chosen by National Geographic are authored by women, and only one female author made the top 10.

Normally, I'd roll my eyes at such an overly-male-weighted list, this day and age, but keep in mind that only twenty-nine of the titles were published 1960 or later. There simply weren't too many women, pre-1960-ish, with some notable exceptions here and there (Amelia Earhart comes immediately to mind, or Sacajawea, and other lady outdoor icons) getting themselves into the kind of extreme scrapes out on the high seas and in the Himalayas and the deserts and on the rivers throughout the world that their brothers and husbands and sons were, and living to tell about it. Different time and era, simple as that.

Hope the list interests some hereabouts. If not, I'm happy just posting another list that interests me. Next post up: Selections 100 to 91...

100: One Man's Mountains by Tom Patey (1971)...

099: Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness by Doug Peacock (1990)

098: Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River by John Kirk Townsend (1839)

097: The Crystal Horizon: Everest-The First Solo Ascent by Reinhold Messner (1982)

096: The Descent of Pierre Saint-Martin by Norbert Casteret (1954)

095: I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson by Osa Johnson (1940)

094: Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians by George Catlin (1841)

093: Alaska Wilderness: Exploring the Central Brooks Range by Robert Marshall (1956)

092: The Silent World by Jacques Yves Cousteau (1953)

091: The Valleys of the Assassins by Freya Stark (1934)

I read The Silent World when I was a kid, and it led me to decide that I wanted to be a marine biologist. My interest in biology prevailed until I came up against organic chemistry in college.

Psht, I got nothing.Is Gerald Durrell too cheesy? Or not outdooradventurey enough?

I wonder whether that is the Adventure Library that once upon a time was cosponsored or some such by A Common Reader. I tried googling 'common reader adventure library' but didn't get very useful results.

Robert

I loved watching as a kid all those Jacques Cousteau specials on TV. He was his own Discovery Channel before cable TV existed.

090: Journal of the Voyage to the Pacific by Alexander Mackenzie (1801)

089: Great Heart by James West Davidson and John Rugge (1988)

088: The Mountains of My Life by Walter Bonatti (1988)

087: Adventures in the Wilderness by William H.H. Murray (1869)

086: Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys by Michael Collins (1974)

085: Conquistadors of the Useless: From the Alps to Annapurna by Lionel Terray (1961)

084: Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins (1941)

083: We Die Alone by David Howarth (1955)

082: Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica by Sara Wheeler (1996)

081: Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy (1965)

Super mega good idea Henri, this thread. It is as if you opened the windows of "Le Salon to let in the fresh air and the summer light !

Cousteau is indeed a classic, the others are unknown to me altough I supect that the Martin Johnson on number 095 was the cook who went with Jack London on his "round the world" trip on the yacht Snark.

The voyage was abandoned because of London's bad health but Martin Johnson continued to Africa where he made a name for himself as a big game Hunter. If I am right, then Johnson give his name to the fictional Martin Eden

Mac, are you familiar with Tristan Jones?

No Porious, I am afraid not. Please do enlighten me !

The full list is available here: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0404/adventure_books_1-19.html

Coincidentally, I'm currently reading the book that they put in first place: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. I'd highly recommend it.

Mac - here's a start: THE INCREDIBLE VOYAGE, Tristan Jones. The daring voyage took Jones from the Dead Sea (lowest body of water) to Lake Titicaca (the highest body of water). On a small craft through the most dangerous and mysterious waters. Jones is also, in my opinion, a first rate writer.

I read a really neat book a couple of years ago, about a pair of guys who drove around the world. They did this in the early 70s and I am forgetting whether they drove a Jeep or a Toyota landcruiser. I believe it was a Jeep. It was a great book full of unbelievable adventures. I can't remember the name of it or the authors' names but it should definitely be on this list.

Also from the front page of the link that funkyderek posted:
- I loved 2 years before the mast.
- I also LOVED Kon-Tiki which I read at age 13 or so.
- Desert Solitaire is not really an adventure book. But it is really really great.
- Antoine de st. Exupery is more known for the little Prince than his books about being a pilot... but he's a wonderful writer. I read his "terre des hommes" and I guess this is the english version? Funny translation of the title... can someone confirm that they are the same?

Does Norman MacLean's Young Men and Fire qualify? Probably not. But its a very fine read.

Anna, Saint - Ex has besides "Le petit Prince" two major works : Vol de Nuit & Terre des Hommes

I own and have enjoyed reading his Flight to Arras.

When I was young, I stuck this text of Saint - Ex , on the wall of my room.

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/2009/09/antoine-de-saint-exupery-terre...

How I love that Great Humanist !

Roald Dahl had some harrowing flying adventures too: Going Solo.

How I love that Great Misanthropist!

This list is so good, I had to resurect Fearless Leader's topic.

And Derek did a fine Irish mitzvah, by posting the link (#10), but sometimes it's fun to take these bad boys in bits n pieces:

80 Journal of a Trapper (1914)
79 Jaguars Ripped My Flesh (1987)
78 Travels by Ibn Battúta (ca 1354)
77 Minus 148 (1969)
76 The Road to Oxiana (1937)
75 Through the Brazillian Wilderness (1914)
74 No Picnic on Mount Kenya (1953)
73 The Fearful Void (1974)
72 Cooper's Creek (1903)
71 The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837)

Other than Cahill's book, I haven't gotten to these, but many are on this dog's list.

Good for you, dawg! Yeah, I was a bit "irked" at #10, as the wind abruptly vacated my sails, but it's a very interesting list worth exploring and adventuring in, no?

Ibn Battuta is an old favorite. Always worth a bit of reread, even just a few pages during a commercial break.

70 Tracks 1980
69 touching the Void 1989
68 Castaways 1555
67 Adrift 1986
66 Mutiny on the Bounty (1790
65 Annapura: A Woman's Place (1980)
64 News from Tartary (1936)
63 My Life As an Explorer 1927
62 Life in the Far West 1849
61 Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex 1821

Sandy, Can you add the names of the author

70 Tracks 1980
69 touching the Void 1989 a "Mountaneering must read"
68 Castaways 1555
67 Adrift 1986 if by Callahan "is a survival at sea classic"
66 Mutiny on the Bounty (1790) epochal !
65 Annapura: A Woman's Place (1980)
64 News from Tartary (1936)
63 My Life As an Explorer 1927
62 Life in the Far West 1849
61 Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex 1821 if by Nathaniel Philbrick. Great book. The real story behind both Moby Dick and Gordon Pym

Seconding Tristan Jones.

Kenneth Anderson's Indian hunting tales.

Alvaro Mutis. Why not fiction?

To many books. Must choose extracts. Ibn Battuta, monkey rape in Sri Lanka.

Jones is first-rate stuff, R.

I started reading The Snow Leopard in a used bookstore and then left without purchasing the book and felt bad about it later. Really nice writing and it sounded like it would have been quite a story.

That prolific Matthiesen is first-rate, also.

60. Incidents of Travel in Yucatan John Lloyd Stephens (1843)
59. Principall Navigations Richard Hakuyt (1589)
58. Alive Piers Paul Ried (1974)
57. running the Amazon Joe Kane (1989)
56. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile John Hanning Speke (1863)
55. My Journey to Lhasa Alexandra David-Neel
54. Mountaineering in the Sierra Madre Clarence King (1872)
53. The Long Walk Slavonir Rawicz (1956)
51. Travels in Arabian Deserts Charles Doughty (1888)

Ok, everyone has probably read Alive, but Stephens' book sounds really good.

29> I've had it forever but never read it even though, like you, I've skimmed and been impressed.

Never read Alive but man have I seen some compelling documentaries over the years on those plane crash survivors. The movie version was okay, the one with Ethan Hawke back in the early '90s.

Don't know if they're on the list, but two books I'd add to it would be Everest: Mountain without Mercy and Where Mountains Live: Twelve Great Treks of the World.

I would also add Last Climb: The Legendary Everest Expeditions of George Mallory, that, I believe, either served as the basis (or vice versa) for the fairly recent Discovery Channel documentary of the mountaineer who may have been the first to summit Everest in 1924, almost 30 years before Hilary. More likely he disappeared on the way up, very near the top, rather than down, but no one can prove it either way.

the snow leopard IS great

Sandy-dawg thinks that life is too short to try to figure out LT Touchstones....

50. Stranger in the Forest, by Eric Hansen (1988)

49. Alone, by Richard Byrd (1938)

48. Man-Eaters of Kumaon, by Jim Corbett (1944)

47. Gipsy Moth Circles the World, by Francis Chichester (1967)

46. K2—The Savage Mountain, by Charles Houston and Robert Bates (1954)

45. The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher (1968)

44. In Trouble Again, by Redmond O'Hanlon (1988)

43. My Life as an Explorer, by Sven Hedin (1925)

42. My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir (1911)

41. Starlight and Storm, by Gaston Rébuffat (1954)

40. 117887::Journey Without Maps by 4401834::Graham Greene (1936)

Just when I think I've gotten them figured out, they do the same thing to me, Dawg.

My First Summer in the Sierra is really good, but I'm probably biased being that Muir was a transplant-CA man who pimped my favorite mountain range in de world. And he was so much more than just a naturalist/environmentalist (latter term wasn't even around in his day) but a philosopher poet, fusing the outdoors with the divine. He's no Emerson or Thoreau, but being that I've visited so many of the locales he triumphed, I'm partial to him.

Story/legend goes that he once got stranded on the summit of Mt. Whitney by nightfall, and being that it was too dangerous to descend in the dark, and not having proper gear to keep him warm, he danced all night on the summit, until dawn, to fend off freezing to death.

Too many books...too many books......too many books......too many books......too many books......too many books......too many books......too many books......too many books...

Robert O Hanlon is very funny. Haven't read any other of the books altough I know the Chichester story well and Corbett is on my TBR pile

SPRING IN WASHINGTON by Louis Halle

39. Everest: The West Ridge, by Thomas Hornbein (1965)

38. Scott's Last Expedition: The Journals, by Robert Falcon Scott (1913)

37. Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen (1937) Karen Blixen

36. Scrambles Amongst the Alps, by Edward Whymper (1871)

35. Endurance, by F.A. Worsley (1931)

34. In the Land of White Death, by Valerian Albanov (1917)

33. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, by Isabella L. Bird (1879)

32. Through the Dark Continent, by Henry M. Stanley (1878)

31. The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman (1849)

30. The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger (1997)

Other than #30, I've no experience with any of these...

Has Mary Kingsley come up in this list yet? I thoroughly enjoyed Travels in West Africa.

High Albania, Edith Durham

Anything by Thesiger or Stark or Richard Burton

29. First Footsteps in East Africa, by Richard Burton (1856)

28. The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative, by David Roberts (1968, 1970)

27. Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum (1900)

26. The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe (1979)

25. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, by Mungo Park (1799)

24. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence

23. The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin (1839)

22. Home of the Blizzard, by Douglas Mawson (1915)

21. Journals, by James Cook (1768-1779) Captain James Cook

20. Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer (1953)

I've read Darwin, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was obviously much livelier than On the Origin of Species. Lawrence and Harrer are on my tottering TBR pile.

Loved The Right Stuff. So did my daughter who read it last summer.

I have got to read that (too)!

I did, great book

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/search/label/Thomas%20Wolfe

Sailing Alone Around the World is one of my all-time favorites. Another really good solo circumnavigation story is Vito Dumas' Alone Through the Roaring Forties.

Check out Tristan Jones bb.

Thanks Por, I've seen his books, but haven't read any. Do you have any favorites?

THE INCREDIBLE VOYAGE is well worth the effort.

Here is a fantastic link to a book on the web " Don Holmes, the circumnavigators", a collection of all sailors doing the grand tour, up to the sixties. Some fascinating stories

http://www.stexboat.com/books/circumnav/ci_table.htm

Wow, excellent link, Mac! I'm looking forward to reading these.

Yes indeed.

19. The Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles Lindbergh (1953) This is Lindbergh's account of perhaps the most famous air journey ever made, the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris. It's a spacious book, too, full of incident—bailouts over Illinois cornfields, Lindbergh's barnstorming days, family lore. More than the tale of a great adventure, it's a portrait of the adventurer.

18. Travels in West Africa, by Mary Kingsley (1897) She went by steamboat and canoe, accompanied by native crewmen, up the Ogooué. She fought off crocodiles with a paddle, hit a leopard over the head with a pot, and wrote with equal charm about beetles and burial customs. Other African explorers were more daring, none more engaging. When she died, the British buried her at sea with full military honors.

17. Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl (1950) Nine balsa-wood logs, a big square sail, a bamboo "cabin" with a roof made of banana leaves—thus did Norwegian Heyerdahl and his companions set sail from Peru toward Polynesia to prove a point: that the South Pacific was settled from the east. Point proved? Maybe not, but it's one hell of a ride—a daring tale, dramatically told.

16. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby (1958) A British high-fashion salesman and a diplomat, Newby and Hugh Carless, with four days' climbing lessons in the Welsh hills, walk into Afghanistan, climb mountains, run into Kafirs with rifles ("Here," one tells the pair happily, "we shoot people without permission"), have a grand time, and survive. The result? This witty, dry, and very English adventure book.

15. South, by Ernest Shackleton (1919) Shackleton's story bears endless retelling (and it has been retold, in fine accounts by Alfred Lansing and, more recently, Caroline Alexander). Here we have it in the great British explorer's own words, quiet, understated, enormously compelling. We all know the story: the expedition to Antarctica in the Endurance, the ship breaking up in the ice, the incredible journey in an open boat across the world's stormiest seas. Though Shackleton's literary gifts may not equal those of Cherry-Garrard or Nansen, his book is a testament, plain and true, to what human beings can endure.

14. Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana (1840) Scion of a prominent Boston family, Dana dropped out of Harvard and, hoping to recover the strength of his eyes, weakened by measles, signed on with a merchant ship as a common sailor. His book about his time at sea is an American classic, vivid in its description of the sailor's life and all its dangers and delights.

13. Roughing It, by Mark Twain (1872) Twain lit out for the territory when the Civil War started and knocked around the West for six years. Roughing It is the record of that time, a great comic bonanza, hilarious when it isn't simply funny, full of the most outrageous characters and events. It is not an adventure book, it is an anti-adventure book, but no less indispensable.

12. The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen (1978) He sees wolves, he sees the wild blue sheep of the Himalaya, but he never does see a snow leopard. Never mind, this is still Matthiessen's best book, a moving spiritual quest and a mountain adventure that celebrates the beauty of this dramatic country and the transcendence concealed in simple day-by-day survival.

11. Farthest North, by Fridtjof Nansen (1897) In 1893, Nansen purposely froze his ship into the Arctic ice and traveled with the drift of the pack. When the ship approached striking distance of the Pole, he set out for it by dogsled, reaching the highest latitude yet attained by man before turning back to Norway. He was gone three years. The book is both an epic and a lyric masterpiece.

10. Travels, by Marco Polo (1298) Polo dictated these tales to a scribe, a writer of romances named Rustichello, while the two men shared a cell in a Genoese prison. Just how much Rustichello added to the text nobody knows. Yet most of what Polo tells us about his overland journey to Asia checks out. He traveled during a relatively peaceful time, so this is not a book about taking physical risks. Nor is it as accessible to modern readers as many of the books on this list. Yet it is without question the founding adventure book of the modern world. Polo gave to the age of exploration that followed the marvels of the East, the strange customs, the fabulous riches, the tribes with gold teeth. It was a Book of Dreams, an incentive, a goad. Out of it came Columbus (whose own copy of the book was heavily annotated), Magellan, Vasco da Gama, and the rest of modern history.

Ah, Heyerdahl. A real man. I know Rand Shackleton another explorer.

The one book I'd read as a kid. Excellent.

I've read a considerable amount of Mathiessen, but not The Snow Leopard - yet.

As I think I mentioned upthread, I read Kon-Tiki as a kid and loved it. I read Two Years Before the Mast in my mid-30s and loved it too. Could not get through the Voyage of the Beagle, but loved Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Great books, great topic. Forgive the change in order/formatting, but let's finish this baad-boy:

1. The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922) As War and Peace is to novels, so is The Worst Journey in the World to the literature of polar travel: the one to beat. The author volunteered as a young man to go to the Antarctic with Robert Falcon Scott in 1910; that, and writing this book, are the only things of substance he ever did in life. They were enough. The expedition set up camp on the edge of the continent while Scott waited to go for the Pole in the spring. But first, Cherry-Garrard and two other men set out on a midwinter trek to collect emperor penguin eggs. It was a heartbreaker: three men hauling 700 pounds (318 kilograms) of gear through unrelieved darkness, with temperatures reaching 50, 60, and 70 degrees below zero (-46, -51, and -57 degrees Celsius); clothes frozen so hard it took two men to bend them. But Cherry-Garrard's greater achievement was to imbue everything he endured with humanity and even humor. And—as when he describes his later search for Scott and the doomed South Pole team—with tragedy as well. His book earns its preeminent place on this list by captivating us on every level: It is vivid; it is moving; it is unforgettable.

2. Journals, by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814) Are there two American explorers more famous? Were there any braver? When they left St. Louis in 1804 to find a water route to the Pacific, no one knew how extensive the Rocky Mountains were or even exactly where they were, and the land beyond was terra incognita. Lewis and Clark's Journals are the closest thing we have to a national epic, and they are magnificent, full of the wonder of the Great West. Here are the first sightings of the vast prairie dog cities; here are huge bears that keep on coming at you with five or six bullets in them, Indian tribes with no knowledge of white men, the mountains stretching for a thousand miles; here are the long rapids, the deep snows, the ways of the Sioux, Crow, Assiniboin; here are buffalo by the millions. Here is the West in its true mythic proportions. Historian Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage gives a fine overview, but to hear the adventure in the two captains' own dogged, rough-hewn words, you need the complete Elliott Coues edition in three volumes. Buy all three. Dive in. Rediscover heroism.


3. Sand & Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1940) Saint-Exupéry was without question the great pilot-poet of the air. And this remarkable classic attains its high ranking here by soaring both as a piece of writing and as a tale of adventure. It was Saint-Exupéry's job in the 1920s to fly the mail from France to Spain across the Pyrenees, in all kinds of weather, with bad maps and no radio. The engine on his plane would sometimes quit, he says, "with a great rattle like the crash of crockery. And one would simply throw in one's hand: there was no hope of refuge on the rocky crust of Spain." Nor in North Africa. He came down once in the Libyan Desert, and there was no water. He and his companion tramped this way and that and found no hope. "Nothing is unbearable," he tells us after a while. "Tomorrow, and the day after, I should learn that nothing was really unbearable." He is calm about it, thoughtful, disinterested, yet at the same time intense, riveting. He takes us to places between impossible hope and endless despair we did not know existed.

4. Exploration of the Colorado River, by John Wesley Powell (1875) Powell lost most of his right arm fighting for the Union, but that didn't stop him from leading the first descent of the Grand Canyon. The year was 1869, and he and his nine men started on the Green River in wooden boats. "We have an unknown distance yet to run," writes Powell, "an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well!" Ah, well, indeed. The rapids were overpowering. They lost boats and supplies. They ran out of food. Near the end, three of the men lost their nerve and climbed out of the canyon; they were killed by Indians. The others stayed with Powell and survived. Powell himself was an unusual man—tough, driven, hard to please. He was also a thoughtful man, a friend of Native Americans, and a gifted geologist. It is this combination—deep curiosity allied with great courage—that makes the book a classic.

5. Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger (1959) The southern Arabian desert, a quarter million square miles of sand (650,000 square kilometers), is now a place of oil wells and Land Rovers, but before the 1950s it was still known as the Empty Quarter, a place you entered only on camel and only as an Arab. Only a few white men had ever seen it, much less crossed it. From 1945 to 1950, the British Thesiger crossed it twice, living with the Bedouin, sharing their hard lives. His book is the classic of desert exploration, a door opening on a vanished feudal world. It is a book of touches, little things-why the Bedouin will never predict the weather ("since to do so would be to claim knowledge that belongs to God"), how they know when the rabbit is in its hole and can be caught. It is written with great respect for these people and with an understanding that acknowledges its limits. With humility, that is, which is appropriate. Fail the humility test, and the desert will surely kill you.

6. Annapurna, by Maurice Herzog (1952) No one had ever climbed an 8,000-meter (26,250-ft.) peak when Herzog led a team of the best climbers in France to Annapurna in 1950. Maps were sketchy and inadequate; they had trouble even finding the peak. They climbed without oxygen. The weather was bad. Nevertheless, Herzog and Louis Lachenal made it to the top. But on the descent, disaster: lost gloves, frostbite, an avalanche. When rescue came, Herzog had almost given up and could hardly move. He lost all his fingers and thus did not write but dictated this book. It has its faults, mostly in Herzog's failure to credit his teammates as fairly as he might. Yet it conveys the essential spirit of climbing as no popular book had before and earns its place here as the most influential mountaineering book of all time.

7. Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey (1968) Abbey is our very own desert father, a hermit loading up on silence and austerity and the radical beauty of empty places. Early on he spent summers working as a ranger at Utah's Arches National Monument, and those summers were the source for this book of reverence for the wild—and outrage over its destruction. But really his whole life was an adventure and a protest against all the masks of progress. He wanted to recapture life on the outside—bare-boned, contemptuous of what we call civilization—and to do it without flinching. He helped ignite the environmental movement, teaching his followers to save the world by leaving it absolutely alone.

8. West With the Night, by Beryl Markham (1942) "A bloody wonderful book," Ernest Hemingway called it, and so it is—Africa from the seat of an Avro biplane, winged prose, if you will, about the lion that mauled her, about the Masai and the Kikuyu, about flying over the Serengeti, searching for the downed plane of her lover. It appears that Markham's third husband, writer Raoul Schumacher, contributed much of the literary polish. But what of it? The book, and the life, still radiate excitement: "I have lifted my plane from the Nairobi airport for perhaps a thousand flights and I have never felt her wheels glide from the earth into the air without knowing the uncertainty and the exhilaration of firstborn adventure."


9. Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer (1997) Was it fate that put Krakauer—at once a crack climber, a seasoned journalist, and a sensitive conscience—on the world's highest mountain during that notorious 1996 season? Unpredictable weather, human folly, and a mind-set committed to client satisfaction killed 12 people on Everest that year, while the whole world watched. Krakauer showed us what it really meant: the traffic jams on the summit ridge; guides bending their own rules to get exhausted clients to the top. He showed us the consequences of disrespect for this formidable goddess, Chomolungma, as the Sherpas call her. And Krakauer is as hard on himself as he is on the rest. Whereas Annapurna is the record of a triumph, Into Thin Air is the postmortem of a debacle—less inspiring, but no less powerful. As the most widely read mountaineering work in recent history, it has profoundly shaped our idea of extreme adventure and who and what it is for.

Gertrude Bell?
Count Byron de Prorok
Harold T. Wilkins
Henning Haslund
Theodore Illion
Thomas Gann
Katherine Routledge
James Churchward
L. Taylor Hansen
Percy H. Fawcett

Oh Desert Solitaire! How much do I love you? I could read that so many thousand times. I put it in the same category as A Sand County Almanac. Ed Abbey was a national treasure. I adore his funny environmental vigilante novels as well.

I have wanted to read #1 and #4 for many years now - must push them up on my list and get to them soon.

I'm currently reading The Lost City of Z. Not the greatest of all time, but interesting.

After brief tours of Costa Rica (albeit in a pristine white/turquoise ecotour bus) and a Darien field station (with Embara guard and cold beer - thanks to a generator - priorities, piroities), I'd love to go visit the wilder Amazon rainforest.

Thanks for finishing up this thread, dawg!

I'll second Anna on Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Can't say I ever got too much into the politics of it all, but his descriptions of the American Southwest, and Arches Nat'l Park in particular, the sun and shadows constantly in flux, playing with the colors of the canyon lands are unsurpassed. You're right there in it.

The Monkey Wrench Gang is hysterical.

Today I took this quiz
http://ran.org/ecotest

(because of Earth Day - happy Earth day by the way everyone!)

...and I ended up an "Eco-Warrior" probably just because I said Ed Abbey on the question on who you wanted to meet the most.

What a great list of books sandydog1. I am glad to see my favourite travel writer Wilfred Thesiger made the top five. There are plenty of others from the list that I am going to enjoy catching up on.

I just finished a couple excellent books, that are apparently not on this list. I (as well as Papa Hemingway) loved Beryl Markham's memoir, West with the Night. She was a real hottie and a wicked party girl, as well as a damn good writer.

I just finished an an audio abridgement (groan!) of River of Doubt. Also excellent; I'm going to find an unabridged real copy, asap.

65: Sandy, I read River of Doubt a while back, and it is one helluva read! I couldn't put it down.

My only complaint is, why is it that every book, remotely related to river travel in Amazonia, absolutely is compelled to include passages, about the horrific relationship, between the tiny parasitic fish the Candiru, and the male urethra?

Ewww!!!

All Kenneth Anderson and Jim Corbett. Also almost all of Conrad, some of Henry Miller, and certainly all of Onetti.

I remember Tom Corbett. The only Jim Corbett I am familiar with is GentlemanJim.

I don't really look at Conrad as an adventure writer. While most of his stories are set in exotic locales that could easily bespeak adventure, the stories themselves are nearly always examinations of individual failure in the European project of westernizing the world. They are mostly psychological studies of the darkness that lies at the edge of the European enlightenment, and, sometimes, that lie at its heart. Conrad's characters often go native, illustrating the incongruity of Western mores in non-western societies.

With regards to #65, check that, of course that wicked Betty, Beryl Markham, made the top 100. She came in at # 8!!!

Recently finished that frigid, marathon torture story, #83, We Die Alone.

I had to follow up with an antidote, the non-listed The Sex Lives of Cannibals.

The Wind, Sand and the Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery contains so much real adventure that you would never guess that de Saint-Exupery also wrote the beautiful Little Prince.

>63 anna_in_pdx:

Oregon-Anna, I just took this test and, of course,

I AM A CLASSIC TREE-HUGGING HIPPIE.

Gee, what a surprise...

I took the test:

You are a Fluffy Animal Defender
According to you, there’s too many damn humans as it is. You are passionate about protecting defenseless, innocent creatures from human folly, abuse and neglect. You’d rather wear PVC shoes made in China than consider donning the skin of a sweet and cuddly animal friend. Your heart is vast and your principles are impervious to the smell of bacon.

The title and first assertion are okay but I use leather and would welcome a test of whether I could survive on bacon.

Robert

I too, am a proponent of treating all animals nicely. As for some animals, at least until the time that it becomes necessary to bound their hindlegs, haul them up, and slash their throats.

Well, it is summer once again, and time for exotic travel to wondrous, exciting places, (my most recent trip was Indianapolis).

I did however, get to crunch through the 90+ tiny chapters of In Patagonia. Songlines is sitting around here somewhere. Maybe next? 'Got to maintain the old reputation of Salon biblio-laggard.