Adventure Biography

On January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp - the dogs were gone. Mawson plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizable, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, "Which one are you?"

In 1991, acting on a tip from a local fisherman, two scuba divers discovered a sunken German U-boat–complete with its crew of 60 men–not too far off the New Jersey coast. The divers, realizing the momentousness of their discovery, began probing the mystery. Over the next six years, they...

From a host of The Daily Show and stand-up comic, Michael Kosta, comes a wildly funny and insightful memoir about his unlikely journey from professional tennis player (#864 in the world) to professional comedian (there’s no ranking system in comedy but he’s probably . . . top 50?). Before...

Since the opening of Glacier National Park in 1910, there were no reported fatal bear attacks until one summer night in 1967, when two grizzlies attacked campers and killed two young women. Inspired by the dramatic and tragic story of that night, and how it eventually influenced the fate of the grizzly bear in the continental United States, Lauren Tarshis has crafted yet another gripping novel in the I Survived series that is sure to shine a light on a terrifying and mostly unknown moment in US history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “The book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about [Dillard's] book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel.” — Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story...

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Every one of us is infinitely valuable to God. What would it mean to live that way? New York Times bestselling author Tim Tebow shares a dynamic message on identity, meaning, and purpose. Highlighting his work with some of the world's most vulnerable...

On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Mount Everest’s North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain’s finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a young Oxford scholar of twenty-two with little previous mountaineering...

An expertly crafted work of reportage, memoir, and biography on the subject of loneliness told through the lives of six iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring. You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by thousands of strangers. The Lonely City is a roving cultural history of urban loneliness, centered on the ultimate city: Manhattan, that teeming island of gneiss, concrete, and glass.

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies—and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable.

WHY WOULD A SAN FRANCISCO ENTREPRENEUR SELL HIS COMPANY, FLY TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, INVEST MILLIONS RESTORING PARADISE, THEN FIGHT LIKE HELL TO GIVE IT ALL AWAY? In 1991, Doug Tompkins left his luxury life in San Francisco and flew 6,500 miles south to a shack in Patagonia that his friends...

The cruising tale is full of the sights and sounds, the fragrances and native customs of foreign lands, especially Central American and the Caribbean. It is a story of a leisurely sail through the Gulf of Cortez and on through Panama Canal to the Azores and England. Cruising in Seraffyn is also a carefully thought out guide to living aboard a small boat, with fun and economy as the guiding principles. Four appendices provide data that is vital for anyone comtemplating long-distance cruising.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The author of Nowhere for Very Long continues her story with this deeply honest, moving account of a woman walking the line between independence and isolation when she moves to the Southwest desert with nothing and no one but her four dogs. In her debut memoir...

I met Tony Bourdain in 2001, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, filming an episode of A Cook’s Tour. From that day on, we were comrades in search of new emotions and experiences greater than ourselves. In 2011, he told me to write my story. It took me 14 years to look back, to filter my life through the lens of our 17-year friendship. Tony showed me the way out of my cage, from the weight of being Soviet-born to becoming a citizen of the world. I had the honor of being his travel companion for 10 TV episodes.

In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port - launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe from the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages.

A catastrophic tornado struck Joplin, Missouri, in 2011. It was part of a larger tornado outbreak in the spring of that year and reached a maximum width of nearly one mile during its path through the southern part of the city, killing 158 people, and injuring over 1,000. It caused damages amounting to $2.8 billion, making it the costliest single tornado in US history. Lauren will bring her signature intensity to this distinctly American natural disaster, placing a young boy in the middle of one of the deadliest tornadoes to strike the United States since 1947.

A majestic tale of discovery thatchanged many long-held views about the world In 1519 Magellan and his fleet of five ships set sail from Seville, Spain, to discover a water route to the fabled Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities -- cloves, pepper, and nutmeg --...

How is a person changed by commitment to their passion, and how does their commitment change over time? These are questions that esteemed climber Sonnie Trotter asks as he reflects on the most thrilling adventures of his sport and his life. 2025 is Sonnie Trotter’s 30th year climbing. He’s...

In 1845, Sir John Franklin and his men set out to "penetrate the icy fastness of the north, and to circumnavigate America." And then they disappeared. The truth about what happened to Franklin's ill-fated Arctic expedition was shrouded in mystery for more than a century. Then, in 1984, Owen Beattie and his team exhumed two crew members from a burial site in the North for forensic evidence, to shocking results. But the most startling discovery didn't come until 2014, when a team commissioned by the Canadian government uncovered one of the lost ships: Erebus.

THIS GRIPPING AND TRIUMPHANT MEMOIR FOLLOWS A LIVING LEGEND OF EXTREME MOUNTAINEERING AS HE MAKES HIS ASSAULT ON HISTORY, ONE 8,000-METER SUMMIT AT A TIME. For eighteen years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing’s holy grail: to stand atop the world’s fourteen 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of...