Mountain Memoir

Growing up in the Canadian Rockies, the mountains have always been home for Jenny Tough. Travelling the world, she's always discovered commonalities with mountains—and mountain people. Her major project is to run solo and unsupported across a mountain range on every continent where indigenous mountain people live isolated from the outside, urban world. Running solo and unsupported comes with obvious logistical as well as physical challenges, but running is also a common language.

If you have ever wondered what is was like to be an explorer in the unspoiled American West of the early 1800s, then this is the audiobook for you. Not only a groundbreaking work of American history by critically acclaimed author Robert M. Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous is also a dramatic story of innovation and survival. Here is your chance to live in the very heart of the American wilderness with legendary trappers and mountain men like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith.

North America's biggest cat was once killed for bounty dollars, slaughtered with impunity and driven toward extinction. But today's cat of intrigue, despite our lingering fears and misconceptions, has returned to much of its native range in the western United States and gained respect as a predator integral and necessary to wild ecosystems. This turnaround was triggered by one man: Maurice Hornocker. Cougars on the Cliff recounts the early years of his research when he tracked lions following a dog's nose and footprints in the snow—before telemetry was available.

Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert Macfarlane reveals how the mystery of the world's highest places has come to grip the Western imagination - and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts.

In August 2017, 32-year-old Jeremy Evans endured multiple ferocious attacks by a protective female grizzly bear while hunting in the Alberta wilderness. Jeremy’s injuries were massive, his scalp and face destroyed, an eye and his jaw dangling down. The tendons on one leg had been fully severed during the mauling. His hands were damaged where he had physically fought the bear. It was more than a dozen kilometres to where he had parked his truck in darkness early that morning and absolutely no one was near.

Oliver Otis Howard thought he was a man of destiny. Chosen to lead the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War, the Union Army general was entrusted with the era's most crucial task: helping millions of former slaves claim the rights of citizens. He was energized by the belief that abolition and Reconstruction, the country's great struggles for liberty and equality, were God's plan for himself and the nation.

In the snow country of Japan during World War II, we meet Morie Sawataishi, a fierce individualist who has chosen to break the law by keeping an Akita dog hidden in a shed on his property. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, there are only sixteen Akitas left in the country. The survival of the breed becomes Morie's passion and life. Devoted to the dogs, Morie is forever changed.

In beautiful prose that is a joy to read, Sherrill opens up the world of the Dog Man and his wife, providing a profound look at what it is to be an individualist in a culture that reveres conformity, and what it means to live.

Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.

In 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest via the South Col route. Roughly two weeks after Whittaker's achievement, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, fellow American mountaineers on the same expedition, became the first climbers ever to summit the world's highest peak via the dangerous and forbidding West Ridge—a route on which only a handful of climbers have since succeeded.

In Forged by Speed, Steve shares his incredible story, from the Steel City to the top step of the world championship podium. Honest, compelling and funny, it is the autobiography of a British sporting legend.

Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins' legendary memoir--wild tales of his life and times, both at home and around the globe. Tom Robbins’ warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels—including Still Life With Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, and Fierce Invalids Home...

"It’s a preposterous plan. Still, if you do get up it, it’ll be the hardest thing that’s been done in the Himalayas." Thus spoke Chris Bonington when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker presented him with their plan to tackle the unscaled West Wall of Changabang - the Shining Mountain - in 1976. Bonington’s was one of the more positive responses; most felt the climb impossibly hard, especially for a two-man, lightweight expedition.

A 2025 Latino Book Award Winner, Bronze Medal for Best Autobiography — English “A shocking and moving read. A brutally honest account of the impact of family separation at the US border.”—Kirkus Reviews The first-ever memoir of a child’s experience in detention on the US/Mexico border...

The true story behind the events that inspired the major motion picture Only the Brave. A "unique and bracing" (Booklist) first-person account by the sole survivor of Arizona's disastrous 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, which took the lives of 19 "hotshots" -- firefighters trained specifically to battle...

In a career that spanned decades, John Denver earned international acclaim as a singer, songwriter, actor, and environmental activist. Songs like "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "Rocky Mountain High", and "Annie's Song" have entered the canon of universal anthems, but at his start John Denver was a young man with little more than a fine voice, a guitar, and a dream. Growing up in a conservative military family, he was not expected to drop out of college and head to Los Angeles, where the music scene was flourishing. Nor was he expected to succeed.

A masterpiece of compelling narrative history, The White Ladder describes the epic rise of mountaineering's world altitude record, a story of ever higher climbs by figures great and small of mountaineering. Daniel Light describes how climbers used revolutionary techniques to launch themselves into the most forbidding conditions. The expeditions illustrate evolutionary changes in climbing style, the advancement of high-altitude science, and the development of mountain climbing as an industry.

In an irresistible tale of a life lived fully, if not always wisely, Liam Clancy, of the legendary Irish group the Clancy Brothers, describes his eventful journey from a small town in Ireland in the 1930s into the heart of the New York music scene in the 1950s and ’60s. Following in the grand...

In The Long Road Home Robert N. Ruesch and Jennifer Lyn Ruesch take an unfiltered look at the devastation of addiction and the relentless hope of recovery. This father-daughter memoir will guide you on a profound journey through Jennifer's struggle with alcohol, drugs, and brokenness, alongside her father's desperate attempts to save his daughter.

Edge of the Map is equal parts inspiring, dramatic, and heartbreaking. One of America's greatest high altitude mountaineers, Christine Boskoff was at the top of her career when she and her partner perished in an avalanche in 2006. Principled and humble, Boskoff was also a deeply loved role model in the climbing community.

A hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking memoir by the chief wildlife ranger in the number one most popular family vacation destination in the USA, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For over 30 years, Kim DeLozier acted as a referee in the wild, trying to protect millions of park visitors from one of the densest populations of wild black bears in America - and the bears from tourists who get too close.