The Reader's Advisor

True Grit:
Tales of Modern-Day Adventure

Ian Baker
The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet’s Lost Paradise. Penguin, 2004.
Tibetan prophecies proclaim that the greatest of beyul, or mystical sanctuaries, lies at the eastern edge of the Himalayas, veiled by a colossal waterfall in the forbidding Tsangpo gorge. After years of investigation, world-class climber and Buddhist scholar Ian Baker and his National Geographic–sponsored team made worldwide news by finding a magnificent 108-foot-high waterfall—the legendary grail of both Western explorers and Tibetan pilgrims. Read also: Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo Gorge, by Peter Heller (Rodale, 2004).

John Balzar
Yukon Alone: The World’s Toughest Adventure Race. Holt, 2000.
Twelve dogs, a sled, and your wits versus 1,023 miles of danger, crossing frozen rivers, icy mountain passes, and spruce forests as big as entire states snow. This is the Yukon Quest. Not as famous as the Iditarod, it is arguably the toughest race on earth, where winning isn't everything; just finishing is an achievement in itself. Balzar profiles the brave mushers who battle fatigue, frostbite, and self-doubt, where success is based not just on luck and skill but the rare bond of trust the contestants have cultivated with their animals. Because without that bond, neither will make it to the finish line. Read also: Winterdance: The Fine Madness of the Iditarod, by Gary Paulsen (Harcourt, 1994).

Rigel Crockett
Fair Wind and Plenty of It. Rodale, 2005.
On November 25th, 1997, the barque Picton Castle, a three-masted, square-rigged tall ship, headed out from Nova Scotia on a voyage around the world. Aboard ship a shifting crew of thirty, a combination of professional sailors and paying crew who were out $32,500 for the privilege of working “crew before the mast,” would travel for over a year and half, calling in at ports as exotic and varied as Aruba, Somoa, Bali and Zanzibar.

Edward Fleming
Heart of the Storm: My Adventures as a Helicopter Rescue Pilot and Commander. Wiley, 2004.
During the course of a thirty-year career in helicopter rescue, Col. Edward Fleming led scores of high-risk missions, including rescue operations during the Halloween storm of 1991 described in The Perfect Storm and the successful rescue of Dr. Jerri Nielsen from Antarctica. Flying helicopters is more dangerous than flying fixed-wing aircraft–and helicopter rescue is one of the most dangerous occupations on earth. Now, Col. Fleming takes readers along for a bracing ride as he recounts the most thrilling episodes of his long career. Read also: The Rescue Season: The Heroic Story of Parajumpers on the Edge of the World, by Bob Drury (S&S, 2001).

Humberto Fontova
The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, Extreme Spear Fishing Adventure amid the Offshore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico. M. Evans, 2001.
Divers from all over the world flock to the waters near and beyond New Orleans where oil rigs act as artificial reefs that attract an astonishing variety of sea creatures. Why? To engage in a highly dangerous sport in which they risk the loss of life and limb to see who can capture the biggest fish.

Thomas Hamill & Paul T. Brown
Escape in Iraq. Stoeger, 2004.
Chronicles the extraordinary experience of American civilian, Thomas Hamill, a truck convoy commander delivering fuel to the U.S. armed forces in Iraq. On April 9, 2004 his convoy was attacked near the Baghdad International Airport. Five of Hamill's associates were killed and he was wounded and taken prisoner by masked gunmen who held him hostage in Iraq for 24 days before he made a miraculous escape.

Pat Henry
By the Grace of the Sea: A woman’s Solo Odyssey Around the World. MH, 2003.
When her once-successful business went bankrupt, 48-year-old Pat Henry had every reason to feel depressed and defeated. Instead, she set sail with no money aboard her 31-foot Southern Cross on a journey through eight years, forty countries, and 30,000 miles that would ultimately make her one of the oldest women to sail around the world alone. Read also: East Towards the Dawn: A Woman's Solo Journey Around the World, by Nan Watkins (Seal, 2002).

Mark Honigsbaum
Valverde’s Gold. FSG, 2004.
When Mark Honigsbaum discovers an ancient Spanish treasure guide buried in his research notebooks, he cannot help but be drawn into the legend of Valverde, a conquistador with a treasure trail that has proven fatal for the past 400 years. Undeterred by the cursed history of the gold, Honigsbaum embarks on an epic journey into the last uncharted range in the Andes--the Llanganati Mountains of eastern Ecuador. Read also: Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd, by Barry Clifford (Morrow, 2003).

Mike Horn
Conquering the Impossible: My 12,000-MileJourney Around the Arctic Circle. St. Martin’s, 2007.
In August 2002, Mike Horn set out to travel 12,000 miles around the globe at the Arctic Circle. This is the gripping account of Horn's grueling 27-month expedition by sail and by foot through extreme Arctic conditions that nearly cost him his life on numerous occasions. Enduring temperatures that ranged to as low as -95 degrees F., Horn battled hazards including shifting and unstable ice that gave way and plunged him into frigid waters, encounters with polar bears so close that he felt their breath on his face, severe frostbite in his fingers, and a fire that destroyed all of his equipment and nearly burned him alive. Read also: Alone across the Arctic: One Woman's Epic Journey by Dog Team, by Pam Flowers (Alaska N'West, 2001) and North to the Night : A Year in the Arctic Ice, by Alvah Simon (Intl. Marine, 1999).

Robert Kurson
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Discovered Hitler’s Lost Submarines. RH, 2004.
In 1991, two divers named John Chatterton and Robert Kohler found an unidentified U-boat embedded in the ocean floor off the coast of New Jersey. No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location. In the seven years between its discovery and its positive identification, U-869 claimed the lives of three experienced wreck divers and scared away many more. Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. Read also: Dragon Sea : A True Tale of Treasure, Archeology, And Greed Off the Coast of Vietnam, by Frank Pope (Harcourt, 2007).

Daniel Lenihan
Submerged: Adventures of America’s Most Elite Underwater Archeology Team. Newmarket, 2002.
Lenihan, the founder and head of the Submerged Cultural Resource Unit (SCRU)— recounts his 25 years exploring everything from sinkholes in Florida to sunken ships, including the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor , the Hunley--the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship-- to the ships sunk by atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll. Lenihan’s personal mission became a fight against the destruction of shipwreck sites by treasure and artifact hunters, finding and documenting them so they could be properly protected as national cultural resources.

Gustavus McLeod
Solo to the Top of the World: Gus McLeod's Daring Record Flight. Smithsonian, 2003.
The story of an entrepreneur who decides to circle the North Pole in a 60-tear-old open-cockpit bi-plane.

Kevin F. McMurray
Deep Descent: Adventure and Death Diving the Andrea Doria. Pocket, 2001.
The author describes his diving expeditions to the wreck of the famed Andrea Doria—considering the “Mount Everest” of diving--and profiles the extreme scuba divers who put themselves in danger to reach this ultimate deepwater wreck. Fourteen scuba divers have lost their lives diving the wreck, where diving conditions are considered very treacherous.

Mick O’Shea
In the Naga’s Wake: The First Man to Navigate the Mekong, from Tibet to the South China Sea. A&U, 2007.
Upon first seeing its unforgiving rapids, 20-year-old traveler Mick O’Shea began dreaming of a solo expedition down the Mekong River, from its source in Tibet to the South China Sea. This exhilarating travel novel captures O’Shea’s extremely dangerous kayak adventure into the unknown through remote gorges, terrifying rapids, and deadly whirlpools, past floating headless bodies, looming dams and terrifying Chinese soldiers.

Kira Salak
The Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles to Timbuktu. Nat. Geo., 2004
Kira Salak decides to retrace Scottish explorer Mungo Park's fatal journey down West Africa's Niger river for 600 miles to Timbuktu. In so doing she became the first person to travel alone from Mali's Old Segou to "the golden city of the Middle Ages," enduring tropical storms, hippos, rapids, the unrelenting heat of the Sahara desert and the mercurial moods of the river, as she travels through one of the most desolate regions in Africa. Read also: The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold, by Frank T. Kryza (Ecco, 2006).

Jeffrey Taylor
River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death & Destiny. HM, 2006.
In a custom-built boat and in the company of a burly (as well as surly) Soviet army veteran, Jeffrey Taylor travels some 2,400 miles down the Lena River from near Lake Baikal to high above the Arctic Circle, recreating a journey first made by Cossack forces more than three hundred years ago.

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