Expeditions Disasters and Adventures
🥇 01
ATLAS OBSCURA
🖋️ Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton
🏢 Workman
A dense (nearly 500 pages) richly documented ultimate explorer's guide to more than 700 hidden marvels, events and curiosities around the world.
🥈 02
DEAD WAKE
🖋️ Erik Larson
🏢 Crown
The last voyage of the Lusitania, the passenger liner sunk by a German torpedo in 1915; by the author of “The Devil in the White City.”
🥉 03
SULLY
🖋️ Chesley B Sullenberger III with Jeffrey Zaslow
🏢 Morrow/HarperCollins
A memoir by the pilot who performed the successful emergency landing of a plane with 155 passengers on the Hudson River in 2009. The basis for the movie.
04
WILD
🖋️ Cheryl Strayed
🏢 Vintage
A woman’s account of the life-changing 1,100-mile solo hike she took along the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995. A 2014 movie.
05
BARBARIAN DAYS
🖋️ William Finnegan
🏢 Penguin Press
This Pulitzer Prize-winning surfing chronicle and memoir by a New Yorker writer celebrates a lifelong obsession.
06
THE INVENTION OF NATURE
🖋️ Andrea Wulf
🏢 Vintage
The life of the visionary German explorer, scientist and naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt.
07
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS
🖋️ David McCullough
🏢 Simon & Schuster
The story of the bicycle mechanics from Ohio who ushered in the age of flight.
08
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA
🖋️ Nathaniel Philbrick
🏢 Penguin
The sinking of the New England whaleship Essex in 1820, by a sperm whale. The basis of the movie.
09
THE OREGON TRAIL
🖋️ Rinker Buck
🏢 Simon & Schuster
The author and his brother travel 2,000 miles by mule and wagon from Missouri to Oregon.
10
PACIFIC
🖋️ Simon Winchester
🏢 Harper
A biography of the Pacific Ocean.