Recommendations based on "True Stories of Polar Adventures"

A surprising and lyrical journey—part memoir, part nature book—meditating on the meaning of "flatness" and its literary tradition to find ways to understand ourselves and our trauma in one of nature’s most undervalued wonders.Does the concept of "flat" have an undeservedly bad rap? There are centuries’ worth of adoration for rolling hills and dramatic, mountainous landscapes. In contrast, flat landscapes are forgettable and seemingly unworthy of poetic or artistic attention.Noreen Masud suffers from complex post-traumatic stress the product of a profoundly disrupted and unstable childhood. It flattens her emotions, blanks out parts of her memory, and colours her world with anxiety. Undertaking a pilgrimage around Britain's flatlands, seeking solace and belonging, she weaves her impressions of the natural world with poetry, folklore and history, and with recollections of her own early life.Masud's British-Pakistani heritage makes her a partial outsider in these both coloniser and colonised, inheritor and dispossessed. Here violence lies beneath the fantasy of pastoral innocence, and histories of harm are interwoven with nature's power to heal. Here, as in her own family history, are many stories that resist the telling. She pursues these paradoxes fearlessly across the flat, haunted spaces she loves, offering a startlingly strange, vivid and intimate account of the land beneath her feet.Masud combines memoir, nature writing, and literary reflection to explore what can be drawn from these powerful places, and to understand her own experience of complex trauma and post-traumatic stress, as well as grief and loss. A Flat Place is a book that drives to the heart of what it means to experience place — bodily and psychologically — and the healing properties of literature and landscape.

As one of the world's leading glaciologists, Professor Jemma Wadham has devoted her career to the glaciers that cover one-tenth of the Earth's land surface. Today, however, these 'ice rivers' are in peril. High up in the Alps, Andes and Himalaya, once-indomitable glaciers are retreating; in Antarctica, meanwhile, thinning ice sheets are releasing meltwater to sensitive marine foodwebs, and may be unlocking vast quantities of methane stored deep beneath them. The potential consequences for humanity are almost unfathomable.Jemma's first encounter with a glacier, as a student, sparked her love of these icy landscapes. There is nowhere on Earth she feels more alive. Whether abseiling down crevasses, skidooing across frozen fjords, exploring ice caverns, or dodging polar bears - for a glaciologist, it's all in a day's work.Prompted by an illness that took her to the brink of death and back, in Ice Rivers Jemma recalls twenty-five years of expeditions around the globe, revealing why the glaciers mean so much to her - and what they should mean to us. As she guides us from the Alps to the Andes, the importance of the ice to crucial ecosystems and human livelihoods becomes clear - our lives are entwined with these coldest places on the planet. This is a memoir like no other: an eye-witness account by a top scientist at the frontline of the climate crisis, and an impassioned love letter to the glaciers that are her obsession.

From the author of the bestseller Eat and Run, a thrilling memoir about his grueling, exhilarating, and immensely inspiring 46-day run to break the speed record for the Appalachian Trail.Scott Jurek is one of the world's best known and most beloved ultrarunners. Renowned for his remarkable endurance and speed, accomplished on a vegan diet, he's finished first in nearly all of ultrarunning's elite events over the course of his career. But after two decades of racing, training, speaking, and touring, Jurek felt an urgent need to discover something new about himself. He embarked on a wholly unique challenge, one that would force him to grow as a person and as an athlete: breaking the speed record for the Appalachian Trail.North is the story of the 2,189-mile journey that nearly shattered him. When he set out in the spring of 2015, Jurek anticipated punishing terrain, forbidding weather, and inevitable injuries. He would have to run nearly 50 miles a day, every day, for almost seven weeks. He knew he would be pushing himself to the limit, that comfort and rest would be in short supply -- but he couldn't have imagined the physical and emotional toll the trip would exact, nor the rewards it would offer.With his wife, Jenny, friends, and the kindness of strangers supporting him, Jurek ran, hiked, and stumbled his way north, one white blaze at a time. A stunning narrative of perseverance and personal transformation, North is a portrait of a man stripped bare on the most demanding and transcendent effort of his life. It will inspire runners and non-runners alike to keep striving for their personal best.

The sinking of the whaleship Essex by an enraged sperm whale in the Pacific in 1820 set in motion one of the most dramatic sea stories of all time, and inspired Moby Dick. Of the 20 sailors who took to lifeboats only three survived, by turning cannibal.

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.

“Hypnotic….It is ever tempting to try to fathom his restless spirit and his determination to challenge fate.”—Janet Maslin, New York TimesWerner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films. More than just Herzog’s journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain , Conquest of the Useless is a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle. With fascinating observations about crew and players—including Herzog’s lead, the somewhat demented internationally renowned star Klaus Kinski—and breathtaking insights into the filmmaking process that are uniquely Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless is an eye-opening look into the mind of a cinematic master.

HistorianNigel Cliff delivers a sweeping, radical reinterpretation of Vasco da Gama’spioneering voyages, revealing their significance as a decisive turning point inthe struggle between Christianity and Islam—a series of events which foreveraltered the relationship between East and West. Perfect for readers of Endurance:Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, Galileo’sDaughter,and Atlantic,this first-ever completeaccount of da Gama’s voyages includes new information from the recentlydiscovered diaries of his sailors and an extraordinary series of lettersbetween da Gama and the Zamorin, a king of modern-dayKerala, India. Cliff, the author of The Shakespeare Riots, draws uponhis own travels in da Gama’s footsteps to add detail, authenticity, and acontemporary perspective to this riveting, one-of-a-kind historical epic.

An account of the ascent of the 21,000ft Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian Andes. Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had achieved the summit before the first disaster struck. What happened and how they dealt with the psychological traumas that resulted is the subject of this book.

The description of a Zen path of one Westerner who began by seeking for the sense of it all, and who came to realize at least a part of it.

The New York Times bestselling author of Desert God and Pharaoh adds another chapter to his popular historical saga featuring the seafaring Tom Courtney, the hero of Monsoon and Blue Horizon, with this magnificent swashbuckling saga set in the eighteenth century and packed with action, violence, romance, and rousing adventure.Tom Courtney, one of four sons of master mariner Sir Hal Courtney, once again sets sail on a treacherous journey that will take him across the vast reaches of the ocean and pit him against dangerous enemies in exotic destinations. But just as the winds propel his sails, passion drives his heart. Turning his ship towards the unknown, Tom Courtney will ultimately find his destiny—and lay the future for the Courtney family.Wilbur Smith, the world’s greatest storyteller, once again recreates all the drama, uncertainty, and courage of a bygone era in this thrilling saga of the sea.