Recommendations based on "In Search of Lake Wobegon"

The Appalachian Trail trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America–majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaining guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way–and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).

In 1991, Doug Tompkins abandoned his comfortable life in San Francisco and flew 6,500 miles south to a shack in Patagonia. Instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, Tompkins stared out the window at Volcano Michinmahuida, blanketed in snow and prowled by mountain lions. Shielded by waterfalls and wilderness, the founder of such groundbreaking companies as Esprit and The North Face suddenly regretted the corporate capitalism from which he had profited from years. As a CEO he had caused much pollution and, “made things nobody needed.” Now, he declared, it was time to reverse the damage to the planet, and maybe even himself.In A Wild Idea, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Jonathan Franklin tells the incredible true story of Douglas Tompkins, who became one of the primary founders of our modern conservation and land protection movement.Piloting his small plane, Tompkins explored the uninhabited lands of Patagonia and gaped at the singular beauty: active volcanoes, forests never logged, rivers never dammed—all so undisturbed, so exquisitely designed.Could he protect this wild beauty? For the ensuing quarter century, that dream— that obsession—became his life. Only in death did it become his legacy.

WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION 2023The Sunday Times Science Book of the YearAs seen on Countryfile‘If anyone was born to save Britain’s rainforests, it was Guy Shrubsole’ Sunday TimesShortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society Literary PrizeTemperate rainforest may once have covered up to one-fifth of Britain, inspiring Celtic druids, Welsh wizards, Romantic poets, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s most loved creations. Though only fragments now remain, they are home to a dazzling variety of luminous life-forms.In this awe-inspiring investigation, Guy Shrubsole travels through the Western Highlands and the Lake District, down to the rainforests of Wales, Devon, and Cornwall to map these spectacular lost worlds for the first time.This is the extraordinary tale of one person’s quest to find Britain’s lost rainforests – and bring them back.Guy Shrubsole's book 'The Lost Rainforests of Britain' was a No.2 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 2023-05-01.

This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

Winner of the National Book AwardThis bestselling, groundbreaking exploration of the Far North is a classic of natural history, anthropology, and travel writing.The Arctic is a perilous place. Only a few species of wild animals can survive its harsh climate. In this modern classic, Barry Lopez explores the many-faceted wonders of the Far North: its strangely stunted forest, its mesmerizing aurora borealis, its frozen seas. Musk oxen, polar bears, narwhal, and other exotic beasts of the region come alive through Lopez’s passionate and nuanced observations. And, as he examines the history and culture of the indigenous people, along with parallel narratives of intrepid, often underprepared and subsequently doomed polar explorers, Lopez drives to the heart of why the austere and formidable Arctic is also a constant source of breathtaking beauty, beguilement, and wonder.Written in prose as memorably pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is a timeless mediation on the ability of the landscape to shape our dreams and to haunt our imaginations.Look for Barry Lopez's new book, Horizon, available now.

From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this dayOn July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution . Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment?Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey both wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science-–the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment.Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain’s imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook’s intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook’s overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter.At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers.

“A gripping tale . . . A convincing, page-turning evocation of recent history.”—The New York TimesRay Barton travels to war-ravaged Southeast Asia to search for his missing friend Michael Langford, a brilliant, risk-taking combat photographer who was stolen into Khmer Rouge Cambodia on a mysterious mission and disappeared. The search illuminates Langford’s heroism, his fierce loyalties, and the personal highways he has traveled to war. Langford’s empathy for the brave but poorly commanded Cambodian troops and his love for a young Cambodian woman have led him in the end to put down the camera and take up the gun in a foreign struggle he had made his own.Koch richly evokes Indochina—from the deceptively tranquil rice paddies of South Vietnam to the corrupt, doomed pink-and-white city of Phnom Penh. Highways to a War is a story of intense relationships forged in a dangerous and hallucinatory land that continues to haunt the American soul.“An absorbing, deeply moving . . . tale of love and heroism. . . . The evocation of the Cambodian landscape . . . is truly haunting.”—Kirkus Reviews“Highways to a War ranks among the best of the . . . literature that has come out of the agony of the wars in Southeast Asia.”—The Orlando Sentinel

It seemed like any other season on Mount Everest. Ten expeditions from around the world were preparing for their summit push, gathered together to try for mountaineering's ultimate prize. Twenty-four hours later, eight of those climbers were dead, victims of the most devastating storm ever to hit Everest. On the North face of the mountain, a British expedition found itself in the thick of the drama. Against all odds, film-maker Matt Dickinson and professional climber Alan Hinkes managed to battle through hurricane-force winds to reach the summit. In Death Zone, Matt Dickinson describes the extraordinary event that put the disaster on the front cover of Time and Newsweek. The desperate attempts of teams on the southern side of the mountain, fatal errors that led to the deaths of three Indian climbers on the North Ridge and the moving story of Rob Hall, the New Zealand guide who stayed with his stricken client, and paid with his life. Based on interviews with the surviving climbers and the first-hand experience of having lived through the killer storm, this gripping non-fiction book tackles issues at the very heart of mountaineering. Death Zone is an extraordinary story of human triumph, folly and disaster.

Recounts the true stories of five women who climbed the dangerous K2 mountain, describing how they overcame the harshest climbing and weather conditions of any mountain in the world.

2000 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for PoetryThis year’s winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Davis McCombs’s Ultima Thule, which was acclaimed as “a book of exploration, of searching regard.... a grave, attentive holding of a light” by the contest judge, the distinguished poet W. S. Merwin. The poems are set above and below the Cave Country of south central Kentucky, where McCombs lives and which is home to thousands of caves. The book is framed by two sonnet sequences, the first about a slave guide and explorer at Mammoth Cave in the mid-1800s and the second about McCombs’s experiences as a guide and park ranger there in the 1990s. Other poems deal with Mammoth Cave’s four- thousand-year human history and the thrills of crawling into tight, rarely visited passageways to see what lies beyond. Often the poems search for oblique angles into personal experience, and the caves and the landscape they create form a personal geology.