(Part 2) Best traveler & explorer biographies according to redditors
We found 579 Reddit comments discussing the best traveler & explorer biographies. We ranked the 215 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
A great book, Death in the Long Grass, describes in great detail how various animals in Africa will kill you. The elephants were particularly nasty, grinding people into a pulp by kneeling on them until you had to identify them by what bits of clothing were still recognizable.
NEVER piss off an elephant.
> Klopp was only targeted by Dortmund because he did miracle work with Mainz. Mainz wasn't strong club in the 2nd tier but he almost got them promoted several times.
He did get them promoted, and survived their first ever season in the BuLi. Your point however stood that he was the most important personnel of that Mainz team, so much so in fact BvB were shocked when they discovered how much Mainz were paying him.
Source: Bring the noise
Not ancient history but I recommend this book about a British diver who dived some important missions during the Falklands conflict in the 1980s.
https://www.amazon.com/Diver-Commercial-Divers-Journey-Through/dp/1574092693
https://www.amazon.com/Among-Grizzlies-Living-Bears-Alaska/dp/0345426053
Here's the book he wrote.
There's also a whole gang of articles about his death from before the documentary came out. Not quite sure why you think the interviews seem staged.
Wanderer by Sterling Hayden
Simple Courage
Endurance
The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor
Robinson Crusoe
Treasure Island
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I've included titles that aren't strictly about ship wrecks, but also pirates, and adventure on the high seas. 'Wanderer' is the best title to start with in terms of TRP. The guy faces divorce rape and decides to take his kids on his schooner and nope the fuck out of the country on an epic sea voyage.
Endurance is perhaps the greatest true story of survival. An amazing tale of a captain that held frame and brought all his men home alive, against amazing odds.
Treasure Island is great fun, and if you have a son, read that to him. Should become his favorite.
If you are lucky enough to meet real sailors, guys who sail their own sloops around the world and live to tell about it, you will never forget the stories they tell you.
Not quite.
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_K2_Disaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_K2_disaster
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-K2-ebook/dp/B007TKATSM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF87ZZ0kKx4
Yes. Most of the candidates for the world's deepest cave do. These caves are formed in type of geological formation called Karst (wikilink). Blind Descent is a book about the race between the folks exploring the linked cave and one in Oaxaca, Mexico. Pretty gripping.
two favorites from Jon Krakauer: Into the Wild: Chris McCandless abandons his possessions, gives all his money to charity and hitchhikes across America to Alaska to live in the wilderness - recently made into a movie directed by Sean Penn. Both book and movie are fascinating. Into Thin Air: details the author's ascent of Mount Everest in 1996 which turned catastrophic when eight climbers were killed and several others were stranded by a freak storm.
> On the afternoon of Friday 14th January 1916 the dog teams of Wild, Marston, Crean and McIlroy were shot, a total at that time of 30 dogs. On the afternoon of the following Sunday 16th January 1916, wild shot Hurley’s team. This left just Macklin’s team and a team look after by Greenstreet.
>Hurley wrote:
>“ The poor creatures have been on scant rations for some time. A casual observer might think the explorer a frozen hearted individual, especially if he noticed the mouths watering when tears ought to be expected. Hunger brings us all to the level of other species and our saying, “ Sledge dogs are born for work, and bred for food”, is but the rationale of experience.”
>On Thursday 30th March 1916 the remaining dogs were shot, and a number skinned and eaten. John Vincent in a press interview in London on 3rd August 1916 is quoted as saying “ I ate two of the dog steaks, they tasted just fine!
From Endurance Obituaries: the Dogs
Read Endurance by Alfred Lansing for the full story. I read it years ago and it's a fantastic account of the expedition.
Reading the following for at risk youths for a program my local library runs afterschool:
Currently reading for myself:
And then I'm reading a bunch of comics/graphic novels, but these are the ones I'm really enjoying at the moment:
You say you like Dan Brown, but what's most revealing is that you like fast-paced, short chapters.
Think of it this way: what you like is short bursts of interesting information that make you say "I wonder how that's going to be important." That's what a lot of people like about Dan Brown's books. He doesn't put in anything odd or unusual that doesn't become important later on. That's part of his formula.
You also like a narrative, or story, with your non-fiction, I'm betting. I'm going to go out on a limb here (and correct me if I'm wrong), but I'm willing to bet the books you're reading about mountains have titles like "Into Thin Air" and "Dark Summit". I doubt you're reading "Tourism and Environment in the Mount Everest Region".
If my guesses are correct, then my advice is to approach the way you have to read in the way you like to read. It's not easy, and it's only a beginning to scaffolding yourself to the level of rigor that you NEED to read at.
If you can, create a narrative for yourself for when you have to read textbook material. No one needs to know. You're Langdon's assistant on this particular mystery. He's got to go talk to the great-GREAT descendant of Hieronymous Bosch. He's left you with a chemistry book and said that the descendant is willing to sell you a completely unknown-til-now Bosch painting for one dollar per atomic weight of gold in the painting. In twenty minutes, he needs you to call and tell him whether it's worth it or not. So, what is the atomic weight of gold, and is it worth a dollar? That's complete nonsense, but you see what I mean?
Another thing you might do is cut your text reading down to what you know you will process. You'll have to change your expectations of reading page after page and processing it all. Mark off stopping points of 3-4 paragraphs and summarize in notes, then progress to 5-7 and summarize, then 8-10. You are not a natural reader of extended text and haven't been trained to do so. You're going to have to train yourself, like you would with a fitness or diet routine, or as a beginner mountain climber.
> I will not commit to the purchase until I have a) spent 2-4 weeks crewing on a yacht (to get an impression on living aboard) and b) done the YachtMasters.
> …
> If I decide this life is for me, the purchase price of the yacht is a non-issue as I am fortunate enough to be able to afford it. The ongoing costs and living also!
If you're seriously in this position, then you should be sailing already, not fantasising over the lifestyle marketing of sailboat manufacturers.
You should be phoning local sailing schools to see if they're teaching this week. You could easily afford to charter a boat and instructor - it'd cost you less than £200 a day - and get some miles in right now.
There are undoubtedly sailing schools in Australia or South Africa where you could take courses - the weather would be more reliable this time of year.
Just a couple of weeks of practical actual sailing experience would make you cringe at the questions you've asked here.
I think there are some UK companies that do zero-to-hero Yachtmaster courses - cost is less than £10000 (£6000, I think), but they take about 6 months. You could get away with less training, but I won't gainsay your statement that you want to get that qualification - it's one of the more grounded things you've written.
However, once you've got that qualification, you won't need us to tell you what boat to buy - you'll have your own opinion, and you may disagree vehemently with other people here.
Even if money was absolutely no object, I doubt I'd buy a new production boat. If I won the lottery then I might eventually have a sailboat built for me, but not immediately. There are too many amazing secondhand boats out there, and once you're out of sight of land it doesn't make so much difference what kind of winches, chartplotter and radio you're equipped with. You must learn to depend upon your own skills and competence, not upon gadgets.
You're putting way too much emphasis on buying new because you don't understand the demands that bluewater sailing places upon boat and crew - you need to be quite familiar with mechanical systems, so you're able to the things that will break on your passage.
Even crossing the smallest ocean puts you 1000 miles from anywhere for days at a time - you can't call a mechanic and you can't claim on your warranty.
You need to know what voltage lead-acid batteries should be charged at, so that you can use a multimeter to diagnose at sea why they're flat. You need to know about electrolysis and what materials seacocks are made out of.
There are 1000 more things you need to learn - before you're even a halfway competent skipper you'll appreciate that you're on a journey of learning and self-improvement. At present you are asking all the wrong questions, and showing no concern for the true path to enlightenment.
If you can't get on a boat today, then you should be reading Lin and Larry Pardey's books (Capable Cruiser and Cruising in Seraffyn should probably be at the top of your list) before you read any more sales brochures.
Kretschmer's Flirting with Mermaids is also enjoyable and inspiring, and might help point you in the right direction - he also does training passages now.
[Sailing a Serious Ocean] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/007170440X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_pBn0CbCSWPKDY) : Sailboats, Storms, Stories and Lessons Learned from 30 Years at Sea - John Kretschmer
As the widely varying answers in this thread suggest, the size of the boat is far from the sole criterion you should be considering; people have traversed the oceans in rowboats. It's not comfortable, but it CAN be done.
Instead, you should ask yourself the question "What do I want to accomplish, and what are the options available to me within my budget?" The Pardeys circumnavigated in a 24-footer that I would find extremely cramped, but they were competent sailors, knew what they enjoyed, and they did a great job of it.
If you're thinking about production boats, this book would be a good place to get you started. In the end, it's a combination of factors having to do with you, the boat, and the way you intend to sail her.
100% correct. Climber Wilco van Rooijen spent two days in the death zone and survived (barely). His book, Surviving K2 is amazing.
Admittedly, very few people could live that long up there but it is possible.
I've seen bears a few times. They are rarely kept in zoos (you are more likely to find a lion in a zoo) but there is one zoo near my parent's summer cabin that has a couple. Also Clark's Trading Post is a weird little theme park that has trained bears.
I've never seen one in the wild, but I understand in the state north of me black bears getting into your garbage is commonplace.
​
Bears are solitary omnivores. (Except for polar bears...which are carnivores). Because they can live off things other then meat they survive in woods too small to support a large pure carnivore...and are thus the biggest baddest predator left any where near here.
Black bears are the smallest, cutest, and least aggressive kind in the US. They are good climbers.
Grizzlies are bigger, more aggressive, and rarer. Their claws are more optimized for digging then climbing.
​
A book by a guy who loved bears...
Among Grizzlies: Living with Wild Bears in Alaska: Timothy
..and a book about how that guy was killed by bears.
Death in the Grizzly Maze: The Timothy Treadwell Story
​
Or if you want a comedy, Threadbear by Andrew Selpie is a novel about a magically animated teddy bear. More violent then it sounds
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
try this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JFKP7VQ ... thanks for the thumbs up, appreciate it.
The case for football's Greatest Quarterback:Tom Brady vs the NFL
Go Long (book about jerry rice)
Never Die Easy (walter payton autobiography)
Coming back STRONGER (Drew Brees)
What it takes to be #1 (Vince Lombardi)
Sailing Alone Around the World is the best known book that you're talking about. Slocum is the first to do it. It's also public - free as either an ebook or audiobook.
Moitissier (The Long Way) is probably #2 most well known after Slocum. He's also prolific and an amazing writer. Just read some modern people (like Krestchmer before buying a steel boat on Moitissier's advice).
non referral link...
http://www.amazon.com/Woodcraft-Camping-George-Washington-Sears-ebook/dp/B004UJAN18/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1452020410&sr=8-2&keywords=camping+and+woodcraft+sears
Thanks very much, a great suggestion! I'm embarrassed it didn't occur to me.
As you mentioned, the Adventure Travel charts were interesting... seem thru-hiking books are very popular! Especially the Appalachian Trail... I've wasted my life doing un-sellable things! ;)
Are the "best seller" categories accurate? I see a lot of forum-folk talking about how to bump your book up the lists, so I'm a little unclear how "best seller" is really calculated... eg right now "How To Live In A Small Car" (3 reviews) is a #11 Bestseller?! I can't help but feel it's a bump from free copies or shills, and ponder how pervasive this is...
>It helps to be at the top of multiple categories.
Silly question, but how do books get allocated to categories? Does an author have any control? I'm assuming there's a process to stop every author choosing every category in a bid to get a #1 somewhere?
ie I see for The Last Englishman: A Thru-Hiking Adventure
> Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,721 Paid in Kindle Store
Number 1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > Specialty Travel > Sports
Number 1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Outdoors & Nature > Hiking & Camping > Camping
Number 2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Outdoors & Nature > Nature Writing
Did he choose those?
Death in the long grass by Peter Chapstick. The writer is a hunting guide in Africa.
Read the book Camping and Woodcraft by George Washington Sears, its out of copyright and available free on the internets. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004UJAN18/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1451941544&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=camping+and+woodcraft+sears&dpPl=1&dpID=51TpIfaCNTL&ref=plSrch
That's a good starter list - if you like Slocum, then I have to throw in my next two fave 'around the world in a small boat books.
Around the World Singlehanded: Cruise of the Islander by Harry Pidgeon is great. He was also a photographer and took some nifty photos.
The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss by Captain J C Voss is also a lot of fun. His vessel was a sailboat made from decking over and rigging sail on a single log dugout canoe he bought from some Pacific NW native americans.
Flying Cloud: The True Story of America's Most Famous Clipper Ship and the Woman Who Guided Her is the story of the fastest clipper ship ever to sail the horn. A most amazing feat still not equaled (OK some catamaran managed to beat her time a few years back - but all it carried was a crew - Flying Cloud carried a full cargo and paid for herself several times over on the first voyage).
Blown Away is a somewhat more modern tale of a couple with kids who chuck it all and buy a boat. Pretty funny.
Flirting with Mermaids : The Unpredictable Life of a Sailboat Delivery Skipper is a fun read of misadventures at sea.
Kindle edition comes out 6 February 2018.
the problem is, those huge sailboats(over 30 feet) are crazy goddamn expensive. There is a cutoff around 30 feet where the price just balloons.
Im with the pardeys in that you need a small boat(25-30ft) if you want to go sailing for a long time. Theres less maintenance involved, its way cheaper to get the boat to begin with, and a lot easier to sail. Maybe he can handle a boat of that size, but is he going to want to after 6 months? a year?
i recommend checking out cruising in seraffyn - http://www.amazon.com/Cruising-Seraffyn-25th-Anniversary-Pardey/dp/1929214049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330580677&sr=8-1
that couple has been sailing long distances for something like 30 years now.
https://smile.amazon.com/Three-Musketeers-Wordsworth-Classics/dp/1853260401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497975465&sr=8-1&keywords=the+three+musketeers+book
Two of the books that absolutely blew me away in terms of 'damn, at least my life isn't like THAT' are The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by David Howarth.
The first is about Scott's last journey to the Antarctic, and the conditions that they undergo, with so little in the way of equipment etc just boggles my mind. We Die Alone is the story of Jan Baalsrud, and you just don't get more badass than that. Not only the attacking the Nazis, the wounds, the frostbite, the self-amputations, and the lying frozen on the tundra for a few weeks, but then he went back and fought the Nazis again.
John Kretschmer's excellent and entertaining book Sailing a Serious Ocean has sections on selecting a bluewater yacht, with lists of specific models that describe exactly the attributes that make them seaworthy.
Not exactly fitting your description, but one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time is Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster. One of the most gripping reads of all time. I got it at the airport once and could not stop reading it for the whole 9-hour flight. I gave it to one of my friends who doesn't like to read and he stayed up all night.
He wrote Into the Wild, as well.
I read an interesting book about one of the deadliest seasons on Mt Everest called Dark Summit. It was pretty eye opening. Basically when you're up in the "death zone", the area that cannot sustain life due to lack of oxygen, you're pretty much already fighting for your own survival. Due to the incredibly harsh conditions, high altitude and low oxygen it is almost certain death to stop & try to help someone already dying.
Hell, even moving a dead body down the mountain is incredibly difficult which is why many of the people who died on Everest are still there.
Basically you have to make a choice, either leave the person to die or try to help them & almost surely die too. Many people die climbing Everest, everyone who makes the trip knows the risks.
Survive the Savage Sea, despite its lurid title, and Adrift are two of the best sea survival stories I've ever read (non-fiction). Jungle is about a guy surviving in the same general area as Juliane Koepcke (although he didn't fall out of a plane...)
Can't find them right now, but Mawson's Will and any good book about Ernest Shackleton will get you going. Then there's Joe Simpson's Touching the Void. Oh, and Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, a really good anthology.
...wow, I read a lot of survival stories.
Tom Brady vs the NFL One man's take on the greatest qb of all time debate, and why he believes it's Brady. May be classified as Patriots porn.
Awesome- you are a quick reader, though. which one are you reading? If you are reading No Picnic on Mt. Kenya, be sure to read the forward by the author (or if you didn't get a version with the forward, try to find it in the library or online) because his life is fascinating.
If you like Krakauer's writing style, I recommend his other mountaineering book Eiger Dreams
some other good mountaineering writers to check out: Joe Simpson, Maurice Herzog , Ed Viesturs, Anatoli Boukreev, Nick Heil, Beck Weathers, and Dave Breashears
Check out The Last Englishman by Kieth Foskett for a good read from a Brit doing the trail.
Sweet book about one mans adventure along the Pacific Crest Trail,
Free download (this weekend only)
If you dont own a kindle, download the free App!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007EDIAY4/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B007EDIAY4&linkCode=as2&tag=hikiinfinl-20
No particular order:
Blind Descent by James M. Tabor. It is a great book about cave exploration and the race to discover the worlds deepest supercave.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Are you interested in the universe and how it all happened? This gives some pretty insightful answers.
From Eternity To Here by Sean Carrol. A really interesting view on the nature and concept of time and how it relates to the us and the universe. It can get a bit deep from time to time, but I found it fascinating.
Adventures Among Ants by Mark W. Moffet. It's about ants. Seriously. Ants.
The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. A first hand account of the ill-fated Scott expedition to the south pole in 1911-1912. Even after reading the book I cannot imagine what those men went through.
Bonus book: The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan. Human intelligence and how it evolved. Some really interesting stuff about the brain and how it works. A very enjoyable read.
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer. Definitely not boring.
Also maybe some Hunter S. Thompson - try Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or The Rum Diary or Hell's Angels (if you're looking for something a little more in-depth and serious).
And if I can use your having picked up Fast Food Nation as a guide... I also recommend Mad in America (about the way the country has dealt with mental health in the past and how they deal with it now) and Say You're One of Them (fiction-but-could-easily-be-true short stories about Africa). That last one was really unsettling.
Diver by Tony Groom
Sea Harrier over the Falklands by Sharkey Ward
Endurance: Shackelton's Incredible Voyage?
Read Treadwell's book: Among Grizzlies It was a damn good read.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Diary-US-Prisoner-21-60-inmate-ebook/dp/B07Y2LFVQK - from the UK too and can confirm that this link works.
An awesome book about surviving for several weeks in the jungle, base on a true story:
http://www.amazon.com/Jungle-Harrowing-True-Story-Survival/dp/0977171906
I've read it and it's awesome. He describes similar stuff like the worms in that book
if you want to read the best survival story EVAR,
http://www.amazon.com/Jungle-Harrowing-True-Story-Survival/dp/0977171906