St. Martins Press

Robert Roper's biography of Willi Unsoeld — the man who traversed Everest via the West Ridge, named his daughter after the mountain, and died on Mount Rainier. A life lived at the edge of every possible boundary.

Buddy Levy's account of the 1881 Greely expedition to the Arctic — 25 men went north, 6 came back. Starvation, mutiny, cannibalism, and one of the most controversial rescue operations in American history.

Himalayan climbing at its most intense — Changabang, the Eiger in winter, K2. Written with raw emotional power by a climber who didn't separate the physical from the psychological. The author died on Everest in 1982, the same expedition as his partner Boardman.

Boukreev's account of the 1996 Everest disaster — the counterpoint to Krakauer's Into Thin Air. A different perspective on the same catastrophe, told by the strongest climber on the mountain that day.

“I had forgotten that my phone knew nothing of whether humans can fly, or the seasonal flow of the Rio Grande, that it had no actual experience because it had never been born, only programmed by someone who might never have set foot in New Mexico.” Winding up far off-route after trying to find a hot spring, science journalist M.R. Connor wonders at the extent GPS technology has commandeered our natural sense of direction, and she then heads out to investigate traditional techniques of human wayfinding with master navigators in the Canadian Arctic, Australia, and the South Pacific. She also ventures deep into modern psychology and the science behind why our brains need to free range; for example, a lack of natural spatial exercise can shrink the hippocampus, increasing risk for depression, PTSD, and Alzheimer’s. Combining a travel narrative with fascinating research, Wayfinding makes a captivating case for reconnecting with our senses and the journey rather than the destination.