• Adrift : Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea
    by Steven Callahan
    On February 4, 1982, midway between the Canary Islands and Antigua, Callahan’s boat “Solo” was struck in the middle of the night by what he thinks was a whale. For 76 days, he drifted 1800 nautical miles across the Atlantic – the only man in history to survive more than a month alone at sea – in a leaky inflatable raft. This is an excellent account of surviving at sea and the ingenuity that keeps him alive.

  • Good Morning Midnight: Life and Death in the Wild
    by Chip Brown
    A portrait of former Capitol Hill speechwriter Guy Waterman follows his decision to leave civilization and live off the land in a Vermont cabin, describing his passionate pursuit of mountain climbing and his controversial suicide.

  • Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
    by Beck Weathers with Stephen G. Michaud
    A survivor of the doomed 1996 Everest expedition recalls his remarkable comeback from being declared dead on the mountain, the daring rescue that brought him home alive, and his subsequent physical and psychological recovery.

  • Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
    by Jon Krakauer
    The author describes his spring 1996 trek to Mt. Everest, a disastrous expedition that claimed the lives of eight climbers, and explains why he survived.

  • Alive: the story of the Andes Survivors
    by Piers Paul Reed
    This book records the struggles and sufferings of the young Uruguayans during the ten weeks following an airplane crash in the Andes.

  • Touching the Void
    by Joe Simpson
    Joe Simpson’s harrowing account of near-death in the Peruvian Andes wrestles with issues of bravery, friendship, physical endurance, the code of the mountains, and the will to live.

  • Between a Rock and a Hard Place
    by Aron Ralston
    In a moving account of strength in the face of adversity, Ralston presents the full story behind the 2003 event that became worldwide news: his self-amputation of his right arm after it was caught between a boulder and a canyon wall during what began as a routine day hike in the Utah Canyons.

  • K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain
    by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts
    Ed Viesturs chronicles the climbing history of K2, the mountain he calls the Holy Grail of mountaineering. One of only sixteen men who have climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000 meter mountains, Viesturs has a wealth of knowledge of not only K2 but mountaineering. His personal insight and experience adds color to a fascinating tale of adventure, danger and death.

  • Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival
    by Dean King
    When the American cargo ship Commerce ran aground on the northwestern shores of Africa in 1815 along with its crew of 12 Connecticut-based sailors, the misfortunes that befell them came fast and hard, from enslavement to reality-bending bouts of dehydration. King’s aggressively researched account of the crew’s once-famous ordeal reads like historical fiction, with unbelievable stories of the seamen’s endurance of heat stroke, starvation and cruelty by their Saharan slavers.

Compiled by Forbes Library Staff | Summaries from ContentCafe | October 2010