Showing titles in Outdoors & Nature

This gripping account of courage, achievement, and heartbreaking loss tells the story of Bonington's Boys, a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest's first ascent. The boyish, fanatically driven Chris Bonington's inner circle included a dozen of the most renowned climbers, who took increasingly terrible risks on now legendary expeditions to the world's most fearsome peaks, and paid an enormous price. Most of them died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: Was it worth it?

Frenchman Lionel Terray is one of mountaineering history's greatest alpinists, and his autobiography, Conquistadors of the Useless, stands among the "100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time", according to National Geographic Adventure magazine. Following World War II, when France desperately needed successes to heal its wounds, Terray emerged as a national hero, conquering summits atop the planet's highest mountains.

Simon McCartney was a young British alpinist climbing many of the hardest routes in the Alps during the late seventies, but it was a chance meeting in Chamonix in 1977 with Californian "Stonemaster" Jack Roberts that would dramatically change both their lives - and almost end Simon’s...The Bond is Simon McCartney’s story of these legendary climbs.

Lifelong fisherman Paul Knight knows the thrill of the chase, the one–on–one battle of endurance between man and beast that is sport fishing. Like Hemingway, and legions of others who've tested themselves against nature, author Paul Knight has traveled to remote parts of the globe to reel in stories of epic adventures with rod and line.

In Wild Air, James Macdonald Lockhart sets out to write about a series of birds as though he has his granny’s role of listening to birds’ songs and calls and relaying what she heard to her aged and by then quite deaf father – the famous naturalist Seton Gordon. From a nightjar’s strange churring song on a heath in the south of England, to a lapwing displaying over the machair in the Outer Hebrides, he writes about eight different birds who he has spent most time with, returned to most often and relays what he hears.

Edge of the Map is equal parts inspiring, dramatic, and heartbreaking. One of America's greatest high altitude mountaineers, Christine Boskoff was at the top of her career when she and her partner perished in an avalanche in 2006. Principled and humble, Boskoff was also a deeply loved role model in the climbing community.

From the cave walls at Lascaux to the last painting by Van Gogh, from the works of Shakespeare to those of Mark Twain, there is clear evidence that crows and ravens influence human culture. Yet this influence is not unidirectional, say the authors of this fascinating book: people profoundly influence crow culture, ecology, and evolution as well. John Marzluff and Tony Angell examine the often surprising ways that crows and humans interact. The authors contend that those interactions reflect a process of "cultural coevolution."

Renee Miller and Tim Beissinger, also known as @thruhikers, share their experiences exploring the outdoors—hiking, backpacking, canoeing, and camping—with millions of people. They break down every aspect of their adventures—trail routes, gear, and more—and share stories from their time out on the trail.

Sue Tidwell lived in awe of Africa’s extraordinary wildlife. After years spent appreciating the animals in her imagination, the tenderhearted American hated the idea of joining her husband on a big game hunting safari. And getting attacked by blood-sucking tsetse flies the moment she stepped off the plane gave no hint of the mind-blowing change of perspective in her future. With her initial animosity turning into curiosity as they breathlessly tracked dangerous beasts, Sue formed a surprising bond with their young female government-assigned game scout.

This book outlines the Death by Bunjie Crossbow Method, a series of principles and techniques and observations the author put together after more than 12 seasons of crossbow hunting. It documents his efforts to share that craft with his daughter, as she becomes a Second Generation Crossbow Hunter. The book begins with her introduction to crossbows, and crossbow hunting, and progresses through intermediate and eventually expert levels of instruction. This book will help you learn some tips and techniques to refine your own crossbow method, and take it to the next level!

One April morning I left the Mexico border and walked north on the Pacific Crest Trail. For five months I hiked through the California desert, the snows of the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. My goal was to succeed in an epic challenge: to hike 2,650 miles and reach Canada before the October snows.

Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart. Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?

From the author of Last Horizons, Peter Hathaway Capstick now presents Death in a Lonely Land, a second volume of his hunting, fishing, and shooting adventures on five continents—stories collected from such magazines as Outdoor Life, NRA’s American Hunter, Guns & Ammo, and Petersen’s Hunting. The stockbroker-turned-outdoorsman recalls his days as an African pro hunter in “The Killer Baboons of Vlackfontein.” “Four Fangs in a Treetop” records a foray into British Honduras for the jaguar, “a gold-dappled teardrop of motion.”

In 1834, Osborne Russell joined an expedition from Boston, which proceeded to the Rocky Mountains to capitalize on the lucrative salmon and fur trade. Beginning at the age of 20, he detailed the life of a trapper in his journal and recorded his adventures through treacherous terrain, encounters with dangerous wildlife, and confrontations with the Rockies natives of the Rockies. Osbourne would remain there for the next nine years. Journal of a Trapper is his remarkable account as he developed into an experienced trapper and a seasoned mountain man of the Rockies.

Peter Hathaway Capstick first earned a name as an outdoor writer in the pages of such magazines as Guns & Ammo, Petersen’s Hunting, The American Hunter, and Outdoor Life. In Last Horizons, the first of a two-volume collection of his hunting, fishing, and shooting tales, Capstick shares twenty-four stories of his keen eye and steady hand with rifle, shotgun, bow, and typewriter.

Polly Letofsky left her Colorado home and headed west across four continents and over 14,000 miles - by foot - to become the first woman to walk around the world. In a spirit of adventure, along with the goal of raising global awareness for breast cancer, strangers welcomed her into their homes. The world had embraced her. But in the middle of Polly's journey, 9/11 flung us all into a crossroads in world history, and she found herself navigating a vastly changing world.

In Casting Forward, naturalist, educator, and writer Steve Ramirez takes the listener on a yearlong journey fly fishing all of the major rivers of the Texas Hill Country.

The publication of The Mountain of My Fear in 1968 and Deborah in 1970 changed the face of the mountaineering narrative. Now these two classic expedition narratives by acclaimed writer David Roberts are together again in one volume for a new generation of readers.

Tony Howard rose to fame in 1965 as a member of a group of young climbers from northern England who made the first British ascent of Norway's Troll Wall. Tony went on to design the modern sit harness, now used universally by every climber in the world. Tony has dedicated his life to travelling the world in search of never before climbed rock faces and remote trekking adventures. The scale of his travels is vast. Quest into the Unknown, the last word in adventure travel, is the jaw-dropping account of a life of adventure that is the very definition of true exploration.

Bob Shepton is an ordained minister in the Church of England in his 70s, but spends most of his time sailing into the Arctic and making first ascents of inaccessible mountains. No tea parties for this vicar. Opening with the disastrous fire that destroyed his yacht whilst he was ice-bound in Greenland, the book travels back to his childhood growing up on his family's rubber plantation in Malaysia, moving back to England after his father was shot by the Japanese during the war, boarding school, the Royal Marines, and the church.