Alps & Europe

Ian Mitchell and Dave Brown on Scottish hillwalking — the culture, the characters, the politics of access, and the landscapes that make Scotland's mountains unlike any others. Opinionated and uncompromising.

If you’ve only skimmed headlines about Spanish mountain athlete Kilian Jornet, you probably think he’s obsessed with speed. After all, the two-time National Geographic Adventurer of the Year holds the fastest known time for climbing and descending the Matterhorn, Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, Denali, and Everest. He also set a record for skiing nearly eighty thousand feet uphill in twenty-four hours. So, yeah, there’s good reason to think Jornet is single-minded in his pursuits. Yet in his new memoir, Above the Clouds, which revolves around a year on Everest, Jornet says, “I ran fast to live a slow lifestyle.” And, more important than the stoke of setting records, “it is about how a runner or climber sees the mountains.” Endurance athletes will like the book’s insight into training and nutrition, but it’s Jornet’s honest ruminations on the “why” of adventure and the siren song of nature that make this a must-read for any mountain lover.

Dermott Somers's collection of mountaineering stories from Ireland and the Alps. Somers writes with a literary intensity unusual in climbing literature — the prose is as demanding as the routes.

In this spellbinding travel narrative, poet and award-winning journalist Kapka Kassabova returns to her roots in the borderland between Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece. Nestled near the Black Sea and one of Europe’s greatest wildernesses, this rugged corner of the world has been overrun by shifting borders for millennia. From ancient Greece through the Ottoman Empire, to the Cold War and today’s Syrian refugees, the story takes switchbacks between cultures and centuries. One moment you’re sipping coffee with an armed border guard at The Disco cafe, the next you’re firewalking with an old woman carrying religious relics over hot coals. Boars and bears and wolves roam the old-growth beeches and oaks. And snakes, it seems, are everywhere. Is it 2016 or the 4th century BC? This kaleidoscopic exploration of boundaries—natural and man-made, real and imaginary—will forever change your bearings on the map.

M. John Harrison's novel about climbing in northern England — the obsession, the relationships it destroys, the moments of transcendence on gritstone. Not an adventure story — a literary novel that happens to take place on rock. One of the best novels ever written about climbing.

Andy Kirkpatrick's account of climbing the hardest winter routes in the Alps — alone, underfunded, and frequently terrified. Kirkpatrick writes about fear better than any climber alive. Funny in a way that makes the danger feel more real, not less.

Paul Kingsnorth's essays about giving up on mainstream environmentalism and finding something harder and more honest in its place. Kingsnorth argues that most green activism is just another form of progress worship. Uncomfortable, necessary, beautifully written.

Lionel Terray's autobiography is one of the great mountaineering memoirs. From the Alps to the Andes to the Himalaya, Terray climbed everything with a joy and ferocity that makes most modern adventure writing seem cautious by comparison. The title alone is worth the cover price.

Paul Pritchard's memoir of climbing the hardest routes in Britain and Patagonia. Pritchard was one of the most talented rock climbers of his generation before a falling rock ended his climbing career. The writing matches the climbing: bold, exposed, committed.

Krakauer's collection of adventure essays — climbing the Eiger, ice fishing in Alaska, descending into the Carlsbad Caverns — established the voice that would carry Into Thin Air and Into the Wild. The essay on the Stikine ice cap is as good as anything he's written.

David Smart's biography of the Italian climber who pioneered big-wall climbing in the Dolomites in the 1930s. Comici's routes were decades ahead of their time. His life — tangled with fascism and tragedy — was as dramatic as his climbing.

The story opens with a furious 14-year-old Jan Redford scrambling high up a chossy rock face, angry at her dad for keeping her out of the “men’s work” involved in moving the family to a rural cabin outside of Québec. The experience was both terrifying and liberating, and from that night onward her complicated love affair with mountains shaped her life, through losing her boyfriend in an avalanche, and later a marriage that restrained and suffocated her. This is a coming-of-age memoir of a climber finding her way in the alpine and also of a woman and mother carving out her sense of identity in a masculine world. When do we set turnaround times in our everyday lives, and how do we sustain a healthy kinship with anger and fear? Redford often writes that she’s “chickenshit,” yet this book is anything but: Its moods gracefully swing from gritty humor to soul-searching agony to the unfettered, sweet freedom of climbing.

Leni and Peter Gillman's account of the 1966 race between American and German teams to climb the Eiger Nordwand by its direct line. Two teams, two styles, one wall, and a death that changed everything.

Messner retells the story of Edward Whymper's first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865, adding his own mountaineer's understanding to the most famous disaster in climbing history. Four men fell to their deaths on the descent. The rope may or may not have been cut.

Anna Brones on the Swedish tradition of slowing down for coffee, pastry, and conversation. Part recipe book, part cultural meditation. A gentle argument for stopping.

Sebastian Junger's short book about wildfire in the American West, Hopi fire ceremonies, and the culture of hotshot crews. Compact and intense, with the same narrative velocity that powered The Perfect Storm.

Gordon Stainforth's account of a climbing accident in Norway in 1969 that killed his brother and left him hanging on a rope for hours. Written decades later, it's a meditation on survival, guilt, and the memories that don't fade.

Saint-Exupéry flew reconnaissance missions over France during the German invasion of 1940. This is his account — lyrical, philosophical, and haunted by the certainty of defeat. The author of The Little Prince at war, seeing the landscape from above as it burns.

Bernadette McDonald's history of Polish mountaineering during the Cold War. Behind the Iron Curtain, Polish climbers developed an approach to the Himalaya — winter ascents, new routes, alpine style — that was bolder than anything the West was doing. Many of them died. This book is their monument.

Alan Hankinson's biography of the British mountaineer, poet, and educator who lost a leg in World War I and returned to the Alps on a prosthetic. Young was the bridge between Victorian and modern mountaineering — his influence shaped a generation.

Helen Macdonald trained a goshawk while grieving her father's death. The result is a memoir that's also a natural history, a literary biography of T.H. White, and an investigation into the wildness we seek when domesticated life fails us.

Roger Hubank's novel about climbing in the Lake District — ambition, rivalry, and the English mountains as a testing ground for character. Literary fiction set on rock.

Will McLewin's slim, beautiful book about walking in the Italian Alps — Monte Viso and the surrounding valleys. Literary mountaineering at its most refined.

Nan Shepherd's poems about the mountains she wrote about in The Living Mountain. Slighter than the prose, but animated by the same intensity of attention.

Intense, unyielding, unapologetic, and at times straight-up angry, world-renowned alpinist Mark Twight holds nothing back in this collection of essays about life in the cold, deadly mountains. Whether recounting his first-ascent exploits in the Alaska Range or sharing his thoughts on nonconformity, Kiss or Kill gives readers the opportunity to spend a few hours inside Twight’s head—and emerge either tougher and more committed to their craft….or perhaps intimidated and looking for a comfy romance novel to cleanse their mental palette.

Robert Macfarlane's glossary of landscape language drawn from the British Isles — words for weather, water, earth, and stone that are disappearing from common use. A companion piece to Wild Words, and one of the inspirations for it.

Andy Cave grew up in a Yorkshire mining community and became one of Britain's best Himalayan climbers. His memoir spans both worlds — the claustrophobia of the coal face and the exposure of the north face. A working-class life in climbing.

Anna Brones on the Swedish concept of lagom — not too much, not too little, just right. A lifestyle book with more substance than most, rooted in a genuine cultural tradition.

Jim Perrin's biography of the brilliant, tormented Welsh climber who pioneered some of the hardest routes in Britain in the 1930s and '40s. Edwards was a psychiatrist, a conscientious objector, and a closeted gay man. He took his own life at 52. Perrin writes about him with devastating empathy.

Alison Fell's novel set against the backdrop of Alpine climbing — ambition, desire, and the Chamonix aiguilles. Literary fiction on ice.

Martijn Doolaard bicycled from Amsterdam to Singapore and photographed the journey. The images are gorgeous — the book is a visual diary of landscapes and encounters across two continents.

Biography of the Austrian climber who insisted on climbing without pitons in the early 1900s — a purist whose ethics were fifty years ahead of the clean climbing movement. He fell to his death at 27.

The autobiography of Britain's greatest rock climber of the 1970s and '80s. Fawcett climbed harder than anyone in the country and did it with a joy that was infectious. Working-class Yorkshire grit on gritstone.

Four college-age rowers crossed the North Atlantic in a 29-foot boat. Fifty-seven days, no motor, no support vessel. The youth and audacity are the point.

The first ascent of the highest peak on each continent — an idea that launched a thousand guided expeditions and changed the culture of mountaineering forever. The original account, before the concept became a checklist.

An otter's life in the rivers of Devon, told with a naturalist's precision and a novelist's sympathy. Published in 1927, it remains one of the finest animal narratives in English — unsentimental, ecologically exact, and devastating.

Scottish winter climbing at its hardest — ice-choked gullies, blizzards, and the particular masochism of climbing in Scotland when you could be anywhere else. Lines writes about cold the way other people write about warmth.

Who knew there could be an international bestseller all about eels? Turns out, as Patrik Svensson writes, quite a few knew. Centuries of leading thinkers—Pliny the Elder, Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, Rachel Carson—have been captivated by eels and their mysterious life cycles, the details of which remain elusive today. Originally published in the author’s native Sweden, The Book of Eels is part natural history and part memoir, as eloquent in surveying modern science as it is in exploring Svensson’s relationship with his father, who grew up catching eels in a creek near his childhood home. With buckets of fishing gear, flashlights, a can of worms, and lyrical words, Svensson shows us “how little a person can really know, about eels or other people, about where you come from and where you’re going.” From birth to dying and all that lies between, this ode to faith and metamorphosis will move you to surprising depths.

A literary thriller set in the Alps — two climbers on the Eiger Nordwand, decades of secrets, and a fall that echoes through time. Mawer writes climbing with the precision of someone who understands both the rock and the psychology.

The natural history of the red fox — biology, behavior, and the relationship between foxes and the humans whose cities they've colonized. Compact and vivid.

British author Robert Macfarlane, who wrote the introduction to the 2011 edition of this classic, is no slouch for words, but he struggled to label The Living Mountain, calling it a “formidably difficult book to describe.” He comes close when he offers “field-note, memoir, natural history, and philosophical meditation,” but what Nan Shepherd’s tidy book really is is a love letter to her beloved Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland. Her observations are as sharp the first fall frost, her words as clear as a high mountain stream. The “light is luminous without being fierce, penetrating to immense distances with an effortless intensity,” she writes. John Muir raptured over the Sierra, but Shepherd writes of the Cairngorms with mentholated coolness, and hers is the superior effort, at least when it comes to knowing the “essential nature” that she was seeking from the very first page.

Bonatti's autobiography — from the first Italian ascent of K2 (and the betrayal that haunted him) to solo first ascents in the Alps. The greatest Italian mountaineer of the twentieth century, telling his story with the passion of a man who was wronged and who never forgot it.

Walking the ancient paths of Britain, Palestine, Spain, and the Himalaya. Each path is a palimpsest — layers of footsteps, centuries deep. Macfarlane at his most lyrical, following routes that were old before roads existed.

Amy Liptrot's memoir of returning to Orkney to recover from alcoholism. The islands — their weather, their seals, their silence — become the instrument of her recovery. Sparse, windswept prose that reads like the landscape it describes.

The 1991 nor'easter that sank the Andrea Gail and killed six fishermen off the Grand Banks. Junger reconstructs the storm, the boat, and the lives of the men aboard with the narrative intensity of a novelist.

A father-son cycling trip through Italy to find the village their ancestors left. The riding is the vehicle; the family history is the destination.

Perrin's biography of the most talented and self-destructive British climber of the twentieth century. Whillans was a genius on rock and a disaster everywhere else. Perrin writes about him with the same unflinching attention he brought to Menlove Edwards.

Harrer's history of climbing the Eiger Nordwand — from the first attempts in the 1930s through his own first ascent in 1938. The definitive account of the most famous wall in the Alps.

Macfarlane sleeping rough in the last wild places of Britain and Ireland — cliff ledges, mountain summits, hollow trees, and salt marshes. The discovery that wildness persists even in the most settled landscape on earth.

My dad, a law-abiding rural county detective, always surprised me with his frequent humming of “Signs” by Five Man Electrical Band: “Hey! What gives you the right? To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep Mother Nature in.” Yet while the urge to roam freely might be universal, the U.S. is veering sharply toward a fenced-in future. Ken Ilgunas earned a following with his 2013 Walden on Wheels, and thank goodness he’s back with This Land is Your Land: part polemic, part travel story across America, and part primer on the history of land use laws. The Swedes call it allemansrätten and in Great Britain it’s the “right to roam”—an average citizen’s license to wander on publicly or privately owned land. How often do you encounter “No Trespassing” signs while camping, hiking, or just walking around the block? Before Americans need a membership card to get outside, everyone who moves should read this book.

The autobiography of the Swiss Machine — the fastest climber of his generation, who soloed the north faces of the Alps in record times and died on Nuptse in 2017. Speed as philosophy.

Macfarlane goes underground — into caves, catacombs, ice cores, nuclear waste sites, and the fungal networks beneath forests. The world beneath our feet, rendered with the same literary attention he brings to the surface.

The Camino from beginning to end — blisters, cathedrals, fellow pilgrims, and the slow transformation that a thousand miles of walking can produce.

You’ll never regret plunging into the “wild swimming” world of British environmentalist Roger Deakin, who lived in a moated farmhouse. Yes, a moat. You’re already charmed, right? Inspired by a short story, Deakin decided to swim throughout Britain in as many bodies of water as possible, often diving into places that hadn’t seen a human swimmer in years. From lochs to ponds, from rivers to the sea, through farm runoff and past alarmed beach guards, Deakin stroked and kicked. Part amphibious adventure memoir and part right to roam manifesto, beneath Waterlog’s delightful quirk lies a serious treatise on public access and the belief that swimming is intrinsically transformative, for “When you enter the water, something like metamorphosis happens.” First published in 1999, this book has been a word-of-mouth bestseller with a fervent fan club, and the new Tin House edition with a foreword by Bonnie Tsui is sublimely subversive reading of the highest order.

A tiny outpost in the Norwegian Arctic and a dogsled camp fixed on a remote slab of Alaskan ice serve as frigid twin sirens for Braverman, who spends several years cycling through both places in an effort to harden her exterior and untangle her insides with equal measures of cold, isolation, and manual labor. In the process, she discovers a valuable truth—that sometimes it’s the suffering you choose that helps you work through the trauma you didn’t.

A history of Himalayan mountaineering's golden age — the 1950s and '60s, when the great peaks fell one by one. Braham was there for some of it, and his perspective is both participant and historian.

Shepherd's uncollected essays and fiction — the work beyond The Living Mountain. The same attention, the same mountains, different angles of approach.

Deakin's exploration of Britain's woods — coppicing, swimming in forest pools, sleeping in hollow trees. The companion piece to Waterlog, trading rivers for trees.