Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist traces Captain Cook's three epic voyages in the Pacific Ocean, alternating between the Captain's written 18th century accounts of the places and people he found and his own contemporary observations of these same locales. The result is part history, part travelogue, and part cultural adventure. It is a celebration of the magnitude of Captain Cook's achievement and an ironic, sometimes amusing, often sad commentary of what has become of the "paradise" he discovered.

An accessible and fascinating collection of a dozen short articles about climbs and climbers from Alaska to France. Challenge and danger are the big themes but Krakauer does a great job of exploring the often humorous quirks and motivations of various climbers, including himself. He also describes ice climbing, canyoneering and the mind-numbing ordeal of being stuck in a a small tent in a storm for several days. If you have never read a book on mountain climbing before, this is a great place to start.

Accepting an assignment from Outside Magazine in 1996 to climb Mt. Everest with a group of amateur adventurers being guided by two enterprising commercial guides, Krakauer finds himself smack in the middle of the most deadly climbing disaster of recent times. His spare, crisp writing style spotlights the intense drama of the events which seem to unfold with cinematic energy and veracity. Weather deteriorates, caution and clear thinking evaporate in the oxygen-starved atmosphere of the "death zone" and by the next day eight climbers are dead. More than a riviting adventure story, Krakauer also take on the troubling moral issues raised by the disaster. These issues are brought into painful relief by his own experience both telling and living this story. This book has become a classic of mountaineering writing.

In April 1869 a young John Muir found himself suffocating in the civilization of San Francisco. He asked a passerby how to get out of town. "Where do you want to go?", he was asked. "Anyplace wild," Muir responded and was given directions to Yosemite, at that time a very remote place. Has any man been more associated with any mountain range more than Muir and the Sierra Nevada? And has any person written more lyrically about any mountains than Muir about the "Range of Light"? Although written when he was an older man, the book is filled with wonder, discovery, spirituality and amazing feats of physical endurance and courage. A spontaneous and lively classic of mountain writing and American literature.

First published in 1982, the author's account of his journey along the back roads of the United States (marked with the color blue on old highway maps) has become something of a modern road classic. When he loses his job and his wife on the same day, he is struck by inspiration: "A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go." He packs up a van to escape out of himself and into the small forgotten towns and places filled with the mystery, spark and wonder of ordinary life. The power of his writing, his sensitivity and his delight in the overlooked and unexamined combine to provide an unusual and fascinating snapshot of the American experience from ground level.

Ever wanted to take a road trip around America with a Nobel Prize winning author? At age 58, Steinbeck and his venerable standard poodle, Charley, set off on a three-month journey in a camper, immersing himself in the fabric of 1960s America. Starting in New England and heading West through Wisconsin, Montana, the North West, down to California, to Texas and New Orleans and back to the East coast, his observations are romantic, humorous, nostaligic, caustic, original and deeply felt. Sometimes he is proud of what he sees, sometimes he feels deeply ashamed but most of the truths he expresses are as valid today as when he witnessed them.

Reading Edward Abbey has been likened to riding a bucking horse. Desert Solitaire is his best-known book. It is an account of his season as a ranger at Arches National Park (then a national monument) in southeastern Utah. Made up of randomly sequenced essays on topics ranging from rafting trips, hikes, horse round ups, recovering bodies of tourists lost in the desert, encounters with campers, ranchers, prospectors, and barflies in nearby Moab. This vivid, lively, iconoclastic, lyrical, philosophical, cynical, romantic, book is a one-of-a-kind modern desert chronicle.

What makes a young person want to give up a comfortable, promising civilized life to live in solitude in a primitve Alaskan wilderness? Breaking free is a dream many people have. Is it a desire to be self-reliant; or to jettison everyday obligations and expectation; or to live more fully by brushing up against danger or hardship; or to follow a more simple or spiritual path? Krakauer explores these issues while relating the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young college graduate from an affluent family who gave his life savings to charity then entered the wilds of Alaska in 1992 dying mysteriously during his first winter. Krakauer is a master at telling gritty, spare, involving story while also making the reader think about the bigger issues raised by the event.