I’m hooked on exploration and adventure of the sea and the poles. I’m chewing through these books like its my job and I LOVE it. I need more.
Here is the list I’ve read or am reading:
* Endurance – Alfred Lansing
* Into the Heart of the Sea – Nathaniel Phillbrick
* Madhouse at the End of the Earth – Julian Scanton
* The Wager – David Grann
* Longitude – Dava Sobel
* Empire of Ice and Stone – Buddy Levy
* The Bounty – Caroline Alexander
* Labyrinth of Ice – Buddy Levy (currently reading, will finish in the next few days)
* Farther than any Man: Rise and Fall of Captain James Cool – Martin Dugard (listening to the audio book)
* River of Doubt – Candice Millard
I’ve really enjoyed Buddy Levy books, Madhouse at the end of the Earth was great, Endurance is a top 5 book for me. The Wager was good. The Bounty was tedious but fascinating.
What else do you recommend? I’m finding that I love these historic age of exploration tales, and the sea/sailing in particular.
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by bfunky
9 Comments
You’ve exceeded my reading list for this topic.
If you are open to a lateral theme change you would likely be enthralled by:
We Die Alone – David Howarth
Into Thin Air – Jon Krakuer
On Desperate Ground – Hampton Sides
Oh! Hampton Sides also wrote In the Kingdom of Ice. It involves the polar region on a ship which resulted in a marooning somewhere in the Siberia.
Be warned that if you dive into the first 3 you are entering multiple new rabbit holes.
Narrative nonfiction: In the Kingdom of Ice (Hampton Sides). It’s excellent.
Essay collection written by someone considering the legacies of Antarctic explorers and braiding those experiences into a 21st-century luxury Antarctic cruise: Beneath the Shadow (Justin Gardiner).
EDIT: misspelled Gardiner’s last name on my first try
*Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus* by Samuel Eliot Morison.
*The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and His Companions from Florida to the Pacific: 1528-1536*, by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. Trans. Fanny Bandelier.
*The Journey and Route of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca* by Cleve Hallenbeck.
*The Florida of the Inca* by Garcilaso de la Vega. Trans. John and Jeannete Varner.
*Narratives of the Career of Hernando De Soto in the Conquest of Florida: As Told by a Knight of Elvas, and in a Relation by Luys Hernandez De Biedma, Factor of the Expedition.*
*The Course of Empire* by Bernard DeVoto.
*America as Seen by Its First Explorers: The Eyes of Discovery* by John Bakeless.
*Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West* by Stephen Ambrose.
[The Ice at the End of the World](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41882632) was interesting.
[The Worst Journey in the World](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48503.The_Worst_Journey_in_the_World) is an account by one of the men on Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.
If you want to branch out into fiction about the sea, Patrick O’Brian’s [Aubrey-Maturin series](https://www.goodreads.com/series/40333-aubrey-maturin) is incredible.
You haven’t read The Terror yet?? Do it now! It is by Dan Simmons.
Against the Ice by Ejnar Mikkelsen
Into Thin Air – John Krakauer
I don’t know if it fits all of your criteria as I read it years ago – but I LOVED “The Ice Limit” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.
A Voyage for Madmen – Peter Nichols