Humor

Bill Bryson is not a hiker. That's what makes this book work. His attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail with his old friend Stephen Katz is equal parts comedy, natural history, and honest reckoning with the American wilderness. Bryson is funny in a way that never undermines the seriousness of the landscape he's walking through.

J. Maarten Troost moved to the South Pacific with his wife and wrote about what he found — kava ceremonies, shark-infested waters, colonial history, and the absurdity of a pale Westerner trying to fit in. Funny and self-aware.

Kathleen Meyer's backcountry sanitation guide — practical, funny, and more necessary than any other book on this list. Somebody had to write it. Meyer wrote it well.

John Soennichsen's collection of stories from Death Valley — the people, the history, the extreme environment. A portrait of the hottest, driest, lowest place in North America and the strange attraction it holds.

The comic side of climbing — collected stories of epic failures, absurd bivouacs, and the moments when the only appropriate response to a mountain is laughter.

Two years on the atoll of Tarawa in Kiribati — one of the most remote places on earth and one of the first to disappear from rising seas. Troost is funny about the discomfort and serious about the stakes.