Biography

James Glover's biography of the man who founded the Wilderness Society and walked more miles in wild country than anyone of his generation. Marshall was a forester, a civil libertarian, and an indefatigable hiker who once walked 70 miles in a single day. The original wilderness advocate.

To fully understand the modern American West, readers must dig deep into the lives, writings, and philosophies of Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner. On the surface, the men couldn’t be more different: Abbey, an irreverent, hard-living wildman, and Stegner, a measured, buttoned-up professor. In this double biography, Gessner compares and contrasts the two icons, revealing unexpected commonalities and hypocrisies, giving the reader a new perspective on these two complex characters and their lasting impacts on the West.

Michael Smith's biography of the Irish seaman who served on three Antarctic expeditions — with Scott twice and Shackleton once — and performed some of the most extraordinary feats of endurance in polar history. Crean walked 35 miles alone across the Ross Ice Shelf to save his companions. Almost nobody knows his name.

Stegner's biography of John Wesley Powell — the one-armed Civil War veteran who ran the Colorado River and tried to tell Washington that the arid West couldn't support the settlement patterns of the East. Nobody listened. Everything Powell predicted came true.

Johanna Garton's biography of Christine Boskoff, one of the most accomplished female mountaineers in history, who died in an avalanche in China in 2006. A story about ambition, love, and the mountains' indifference to both.

David Smart's biography of the Italian climber who pioneered big-wall climbing in the Dolomites in the 1930s. Comici's routes were decades ahead of their time. His life — tangled with fascism and tragedy — was as dramatic as his climbing.

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.

Julie Summers investigates the life of Andrew 'Sandy' Irvine, who disappeared with George Mallory near the summit of Everest in 1924. Did they summit? The question remains open. Summers builds the portrait of a young man who walked into clouds and never came back.

David Roberts investigates the 1934 disappearance of a 20-year-old artist and wanderer in the Utah canyonlands. Ruess walked into the desert and never came back. Roberts traces the life and weighs the theories, but the mystery endures — which is probably how Ruess would have wanted it.

Alan Hankinson's biography of the British mountaineer, poet, and educator who lost a leg in World War I and returned to the Alps on a prosthetic. Young was the bridge between Victorian and modern mountaineering — his influence shaped a generation.

Ben Montgomery tells the story of Emma Gatewood, who in 1955, at age 67, became the first woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail — in sneakers, with a homemade bag. She did it twice more. The story behind the legend is tougher than the legend.

Messner and Horst Höfler's biography of the Austrian climber who soloed the first ascent of Nanga Parbat in 1953 — one of the most audacious acts in mountaineering history. Buhl climbed for 41 hours straight, hallucinating near the summit. He died four years later on Chogolisa.

In 1991, wearing racing flats and little more than his signature lion’s mane of red-gold hair, with neither a GPS watch nor a trainer to set pace, Canadian Al Howie blazed two world records back to back: one for a 1,300-mile race, finishing in sixteen days, nineteen hours, and one for a 4,533-mile cross-Canada race, averaging sixty-three miles a day for over two months. Yes, two months. Ultra, shmultra—and now we think a fifty-miler is tough. In this moving biography of an obscure legend, screenwriter Jared Beasley sketches a soulful portrait of an embattled figure who, fueled by fish n’ chips and beer and instinct, won dozens of mega-distance races in the 1980s and ’90s, inspiring many with his working-class heroism and singular devotion to mileage. In Search of Al Howie will leave you yearning for a recent yet distant unplugged era in human-powered adventure, when a free spirit kindled righteous pursuits of endurance as a way of life.

Jim Perrin's biography of the brilliant, tormented Welsh climber who pioneered some of the hardest routes in Britain in the 1930s and '40s. Edwards was a psychiatrist, a conscientious objector, and a closeted gay man. He took his own life at 52. Perrin writes about him with devastating empathy.

Biography of the Austrian climber who insisted on climbing without pitons in the early 1900s — a purist whose ethics were fifty years ahead of the clean climbing movement. He fell to his death at 27.

Biography of the greatest alpine climber most people have never heard of. Kurtyka's ascents in the Himalaya and Karakoram were decades ahead of their time, and McDonald's portrait captures both the climbing and the philosophy behind it.

Biography of the Italian prince who was one of the greatest expedition mountaineers of the early twentieth century — K2, the North Pole, Ruwenzori. Royal privilege in the service of genuine exploration.

In 1978, at age seventeen, Eustace Conway took one look at his future in an ever-complicated world and decided he wanted nothing to do with the stuff. Instead, he devoted himself to the Appalachian backwoods, carving out a spartan existence that would allow him to exist in harmony with the richness of the land. Or so he thought. When a curious Gilbert tags along for a bit, she discovers that the pursuit of a simpler life is anything but straightforward.

Tilman was the greatest explorer-mountaineer of the twentieth century and among the most eccentric. He climbed Nanda Devi, sailed to the Arctic in his seventies, and disappeared at sea at 79. The biography matches the subject — spare, tough, admirable.

Washburn pioneered aerial mountain photography and made first ascents across Alaska. Roberts's biography captures a man whose ambition was matched only by his photographic eye.

The true story of the 1913 first ascent of Denali — not from the famous leader's perspective but from Harry Karstens, the frontier guide who actually got the expedition to the summit. A correction to the historical record.

Perrin's biography of the most talented and self-destructive British climber of the twentieth century. Whillans was a genius on rock and a disaster everywhere else. Perrin writes about him with the same unflinching attention he brought to Menlove Edwards.

The most complete biography of Mallory — not just the climber who disappeared on Everest in 1924 but the teacher, the husband, the man shaped by the trenches of World War I.

Roosevelt before the presidency — ranching in the Dakota Badlands, hunting, and recovering from the death of his wife. The landscape that made the conservationist president.

The life and death of the greatest steep skier of his generation. Coombs skied lines in Alaska and the Alps that nobody else would touch, then died on La Meije trying to save a friend.

The authorized biography — the full arc of a life spent choosing the hardest path. Maitland had access to Thesiger's papers and the result is definitive.