Mariner Books

Jordan Fisher Smith spent fourteen years as a ranger in the American River canyons — the land that was supposed to be flooded by Auburn Dam but never was. He write from a place of great knowing about a landscape caught between preservation and neglect, with meth labs, murders, drownings, and wildfire countered by moments of wonder.

The definitive reference — every break, every surfer, every era, every contest. Warshaw spent decades compiling what is essentially the complete history of wave riding.

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.

Remember how as a kid you shimmied up maples or oaks or elms, never once imagining how as an adult you’d do less and less of this because people would look at you funny? Not only did he never stop, Emmy-winning cameraman James Aldred branched out as a career photographer focused on treetop perspectives; his Twitter account reads “jungle canopy specialist,” and you’ve probably seen his work on the BBC or in National Geographic. A high-spirited memoir, The Man Who Climbs Trees is an enthusiastic love letter to big trees in Borneo, Peru, Australia, Costa Rica, and Northern California, including the tallest known tree on the planet, a nearly 380-foot giant. The life of a tree-climbing artist is not all swaying in the breeze, however—there’s also the risk of cerebral malaria, rope system accidents, and over-curious harpy eagles. In Aldred’s descriptions, the trees are both settings and characters, and you’ll wonder why we don’t yet have a catchy phrase for charismatic mega-arboribus.

Theroux's novel about an American inventor who drags his family to the Honduran jungle to build a utopia. It goes wrong in every possible way. A dark comedy about American arrogance in the tropics.

Bass's memoir of moving to Montana's Yaak Valley and spending decades defending it. The personal story behind the activism — why a man from Texas chose the wildest place in the Lower 48 and refused to leave.