Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsango River
Peter Heller's account of the first attempt to kayak the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet — the deepest canyon on earth, with rapids that had never been run. One member of the team drowned. The others kept going. Adventure journalism at its most committed.
Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously
Bill McKibben spent a year training for cross-country ski racing and thinking about what physical effort means in a sedentary culture. The skiing is the frame; the questions about embodiment and endurance are the point.
Buy at Bookshop.org
Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results
The global history of surfing — how it traveled from Polynesia to every coastline on earth, and what happened when it arrived. Surfing in Gaza, surfing in Iceland, surfing in war zones. The unexpected results are the best parts.
The Fear Project: What Our Most Primal Emotion Taught Me About Survival, Success, Surfing . . . and Love
An investigation into the neuroscience of fear, tested in the surf. Big waves as a laboratory for understanding the brain's most ancient emotion.