Oceania

J. Maarten Troost moved to the South Pacific with his wife and wrote about what he found — kava ceremonies, shark-infested waters, colonial history, and the absurdity of a pale Westerner trying to fit in. Funny and self-aware.

Garrett McNamara's memoir of surfing the biggest waves on earth — including his record-setting ride at Nazaré. McNamara's childhood was chaotic and his path to big-wave surfing was unlikely. The waves are the least surprising part of the story.

Nathaniel Philbrick's account of the Essex, the Nantucket whaling ship rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820 — the event that inspired Moby-Dick. The crew's subsequent ordeal in open boats is one of the most harrowing survival stories in maritime history.

Thor Heyerdahl's account of crossing the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft to prove that ancient South Americans could have settled Polynesia. The theory is debatable. The voyage is not — 101 days on the open ocean with five companions and a parrot, armed with a hypothesis and no backup plan.

Through photography, interviews, crew stories, and a foreword by Desmond Tutu, the hardcover Mālama Honua shares the travels of a double-hulled canoe named Hōkūle’a. Built in the 1970s, this sailing canoe was created to revive the art and science of ancient Polynesian wayfinding techniques: understanding the distinct patterns of ocean swells, reading the stars for clues, predicting the weather from animal behavior and wind. No GPS, National Weather Service, or Apple products allowed. Because as one of the book’s modern day navigators says, “If you can read the ocean…you will never be lost.” The book begins in 2014 and covers a multi-year boat journey to communities in New Zealand, Australia, Africa, and South and North America, steered onward by captain Nainoa Thompson, the first native Hawaiian since the 14th century to sail without modern instruments from Hawaii to Tahiti. Visually luscious, educationally inspiring, and totally badass—how many times have you relied upon your smartphone today?—this book is a treasure of hard-won knowledge and experience.

Solo paddling along the coasts of the Hawaiian Islands — reefs, open crossings, and the kind of self-reliance that comes from decades of doing things alone in the ocean.

The first of the Sutherland trilogy — solo paddling along Molokai's sea cliffs, sleeping on ledges, swimming into sea caves. A woman alone with the Pacific, entirely on her own terms.

The greatest competitive surfer of all time on his childhood, his rivalry with Andy Irons, and what it's like to spend your life inside waves. More introspective than you'd expect from an eleven-time world champion.

The nearly forgotten story of William Willis, who sailed a raft across the Pacific at age 61, then did it again at 73. A character so improbable he makes Heyerdahl look cautious.

Willis sailed a raft across the Pacific at 61, then again at 73. The voyages were more dangerous and more improbable than Kon-Tiki, and almost nobody remembers them.

Theroux paddled a kayak through the islands of the Pacific — Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia — in his characteristically abrasive, observant, and entertaining style. The kayak was the excuse; the cultures were the subject.

Ed Gillet kayaked solo from Monterey to Hawaii in 1987 — 2,200 miles of open Pacific, no support boat. The most audacious solo ocean crossing by human power ever attempted. Almost nobody knows about it.

London's novel about a literary critic shanghaied aboard a sealing schooner captained by Wolf Larsen — a Nietzschean brute who reads Herbert Spencer between beatings. The Pacific Ocean as a classroom in survival of the fittest.

Two years on the atoll of Tarawa in Kiribati — one of the most remote places on earth and one of the first to disappear from rising seas. Troost is funny about the discomfort and serious about the stakes.

Chatwin's investigation into Aboriginal Australian song-paths — the invisible routes that crisscross the continent, sung into existence by the ancestors. Part travel, part anthropology, part philosophical notebook. Chatwin at his most ambitious and most controversial.

Pritchard was hit by a falling rock on the Totem Pole, a sea stack in Tasmania, and suffered a catastrophic brain injury. His memoir of recovery — relearning to speak, to walk, to think — is as harrowing and brave as his climbing ever was.

In 1977, Davidson spent nine months trekking across the broiling, desolate Australian Outback, alone save for her dog and a motley crew of camels she’d spent two years training. While some at the time called her stubborn, foolish, and even crazy, her story is something else completely—a feminist rallying cry, a fascinating study in self-determination, and a celebration of the indomitable power of the human—and animal—spirit.

The adventure novel that invented the genre. A boy, a map, a one-legged pirate, and an island full of buried gold. Stevenson wrote it for children and created something that adults can't put down either.

A chef's love letter to the landscape and food of Newfoundland — wild game, foraged plants, and the connection between cooking and the land the ingredients come from.