OUTDOORS & NATURE
Special Summer Reading Edition
lose yourself in these stories from the edge.
"Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire in the West"
by Murry A. Taylor
Murry Taylor routinely does what most people would never even contemplate: he
parachutes from 3,000 feet out of small planes into wildfire. "Jumping Fire" is his story
of one particularly incendiary Alaskan summer, interspersed with memories accumulated
from his nearly three decades of smokejumping and tales by and about his colorful
colleagues.
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"In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex"
by Nathaniel Philbrick
"In the Heart of the Sea" is the true story that inspired "Moby-Dick,"
and it will scare the daylights out of you. Champion sailor,
scholar, and suspense writer Philbrick puts you aboard the ship Essex in 1820, when a
terrifying 80-ton sperm whale sank it, forcing survivors to take to open boats and brave
storms, sharks... and each other.
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"Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest"
by Beck Weathers
Climber Beck Weathers spent 18 hours unconscious and facedown in the snow after
descending from Everest's upper reaches in the same disastrous storm that Jon Krakauer
chronicled in "Into Thin Air." "Left for Dead" is his deeply
personal story, told in first-person accounts by a variety of people who contributed to his
miraculous survival.
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"Savage Shore: Life and Death with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters"
by Edward Marriott
The great white gets all the press, but the shark most feared by people around the world is
the bull shark, a fish of warm seas that even penetrates fresh water. In "Savage Shore,"
travel writer Edward Marriott reports that Nicaraguan fishermen still pursue these
predators by dangerous, traditional means; readers with a scent for blood will not be
disappointed.
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"Teewinot"
by Jack Turner
For three decades philosopher-outdoorsman Jack Turner has guided climbers up
Wyoming's Teton Mountains. In "Teewinot" (named for one of the range's jagged peaks),
the author of "The Abstract Wild" ponders the interplay between
his avocation and the landscape, the need to face one's mortality, and the spiritual
significance of our dwindling remote places.
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"In Search of Moby Dick"
by Tim Severin
Shiver me timbers! "In Search of Moby Dick" is a rousing journey on the storm-tossed
oceans where fact and fiction meet. High-seas adventurer Tim Severin ("The Spice
Islands Voyage") sets sail for the South Pacific, this time seeking the origins of Herman
Melville's legendary literary creation, the great white whale.
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"My Quest for the Yeti"
by Reinhold Messner
Famed Austrian alpinist Reinhold Messner has spent much of three decades climbing in
the Himalayas--and, as it turns out, looking along the way for evidence of the yeti, the
legendary, supposedly humanoid inhabitant of the high mountains. In addition to tracks,
eerie cries, and fleeting glimpses, Messner writes in "My Quest for the Yeti" of having
encountered "an apparition" at the Tibetan headwaters of the Mekong River.
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"The Adventurist: My Life in Dangerous Places"
by Robert Young Pelton
Readers for whom the word "travel" ordinarily conjures images of white-sand beaches or
Tuscan hill towns might wonder what person leaves home with hopes of facing Afghan
rebels, Malaysian pirates, warlords, headhunters, or terrorists. That person is Robert
Young Pelton, and his memoir-travelogue "The Adventurist" offers views of places and
experiences that most readers would otherwise never know.
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You'll find more great books, articles, excerpts, and
interviews in Amazon.com's Outdoors & Nature section.
