Ecco

Following the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition, President Thomas Jefferson shifted his focus from exploration to the most American of American pursuits—making money. Enter millionaire John Jacob Astor and his wildly ambitious scheme to create a global trade network, using Lewis and Clark’s newly established route as a primary artery of commerce. Astoria is the tale of this often-overlooked chapter in American history, one with no shortage of adventure, egos, and wild uncharted landscapes.

As a world record-breaking cave diver and National Geographic filmmaker, Jill Heinerth has plunged into uncharted depths around the globe, from the icy tunnels of an Antarctic iceberg to the cerulean cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula. Filled with scientific and adventurous firsts as well as claustrophobia-inducing squeezes, Into the Planet is an earnestly told story of life as a professional underwater explorer. Although she didn’t learn how to dive until her late twenties, from a young age Heinerth felt that water gave her a freedom she’d never known on land. She shares the hard-earned euphoria of “swimming through the veins of Mother Earth,” but also the terrifyingly narrow margins for error, as she recounts her own close calls and death after death of colleagues and friends. With the hiss and click of a rebreather, Planet submerges the reader between blackness and light, pausing, every so often, for a heart-stopping view of the sublime wilderness below.

Dillard's selected essays, drawn from across her career. The best introduction to her work — from Tinker Creek to the Arctic to the writing desk. The prose is a force of nature.

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.

We first meet Nelson as a 13-year-old Boy Scout in the summer of 1962, his shirt and shorts squeaky clean, sash heavy with merit badges, bowlines impeccable. He strives to be loyal, brave, and kind—terms of the Scout Law. At Camp Chippewa in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, Nelson’s the ideal citizen. But his overachieving doesn’t earn any friends until Jonathan, a popular scout, takes an unexpected interest in him. This panoramic coming-of-age novel strides across three American generations, from the echoes of World War I to today in Afghanistan, and from shattering tragedies to sweet first loves. There are times you want to look away from this book, and times you want to hold it close. Through it all, Camp Chippewa remains central, with its tidy tents and fields of lightning bugs. Can the moral compass of summer camp keep us oriented throughout our lives?