by John All and John Balzar (2017)
From the publisher: John All has survived encounters with black mamba snakes, run-ins with wild jungle animals, and a brush with death in an icy tomb. No one knows the outer limits of our changing planet quite like him. In May 2014, the mountaineer and scientist John All plunged into a crevasse in the Himalayas, a fall that all but killed him. He recorded a series of dramatic videos as he struggled to climb seven stories back up to the surface with a severely dislocated shoulder, internal bleeding, a battered face covered in blood, and fifteen broken bones--including six cracked vertebrae. The videos became a viral sensation, an urgent and gripping dispatch from one of the least-known extremes of the planet. Yet this climb for his life is only the latest of John All's adventures in some of Earth's most hostile climates. He has also been chased by a wild hyena, scaled Everest, and narrowly missed being hit by an avalanche, all in pursuit of his true calling: the study of how we can master the challenge of our world's changing climate. Icefall is a thrilling adventure story and a report from the extremes of the planet, taking you to collapsing Andean glaciers, hidden jungles in Honduras, and the highest points on Earth. In this gripping account, our changing climate is not a matter of politics; it's a matter of life and death and the human will to survive and thrive in the face of it.
Anthony Smith
Describes the epic odyssey of Isabela Godin des Odonais, an eighteenth-century aristocrat, who braved the perils of the Amazon to undertake a three-thousand-mile journey marked by hardship, starvation, danger, and death.
Monica Maria Tetzlaff
"Born into a Massachusetts abolitionist family, Abbie Holmes Christensen (1852-1938) epitomized the Yankee reformer spirit of the nineteenth century. Well educated and passionate about human rights, she moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, with her parents in 1864 as part of the Port Royal Experiment. In 1870, as a teenager, she began teaching black students. During her life she labored to educate South Carolina's African Americans, fought for women's equal participation in politics, and eventually took a role in the Socialist Party of America.". "Tetzlaff chronicles Abbie Holmes's education at Mount Holyoke College, her return to Beaufort, and her marriage in 1875 to Niels Christensen, a Danish immigrant and former captain of "Colored Troops" in the Union army. Tetzlaff depicts the intensity of Christensen's private and public life as the mother of six children and as a tireless reformer engaged in the temperance and women's suffrage movements. Together with black South Carolinians, Christensen did pioneering work as a Gullah folklorist and established an African American agricultural school and hospital. In cooperation with white southern women, she promoted the conservation of wildlife and the greening of town spaces.". "As Tetzlaff recounts an uncommon life story, she also sheds light on the time and place in which Christensen worked. Through Christensen's biography, Tetzlaff illumines the collapse, recovery, and second collapse of agriculture in South Carolina's lowcountry, African Americans' brief equality and second subjugation under the forces of Jim Crow, and the transformation of Beaufort County by industry, migration and national politics."--BOOK JACKET.
Patrick Robinson
"Patrick Robinson, coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Lone Survivor shares the gripping untold story of Mohammed Gulab, the Pashtun warrior who defied the Taliban and saved the life of American hero and Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. Bestselling author Patrick Robinson helped Marcus Luttrell bring his harrowing story of survival in Lone Survivor : the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL Team 10 to the page and the big screen. But the Afghani man who saved his life was always shrouded in mystery. Now, with The Lion of Sabray, Robinson reveals the amazing backstory of Mohammed Gulab--the brave man who forever changed the course of life for his Afghan family, his village, and himself when he discovered Luttrell badly injured and barely conscious on a mountainside in the Hindu Kush just hours after the firefight that killed the rest of Luttrell's team. Operating under the 2,000-year-old principles of Pashtunwali--the tribal honor code that guided his life--Gulab refused to turn Luttrell over to the Taliban forces that were hunting him, believing it was his obligation to protect and care for the American soldier. Because Gulab was a celebrated Mujahedeen field commander and machine-gunner who beat back the Soviets as a teenager, the Taliban were wary enough that they didn't simply storm the village and take Luttrell, which gave Gulab time to orchestrate his rescue. In addition to Gulab's brave story, The Lion of Sabray cinematically reveals previously unknown details of Luttrell's rescue by American forces--which were only recently declassified--and sheds light on the ramifications for Gulab, his family, and his community. Going beyond both the book and the movie versions of Lone Survivor, The Lion of Sabray is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about the brave man who helped the Lone Survivor make it home"--
Larry Woiwode
"What I Think I Did is two stories at once: a gripping account of surviving the severest recorded winter in North Dakota's history (1996), and the equally compelling tale of Woiwode's hungry years as an actor and writer leading up to the publication of his first novel. As with all of Woiwode's writing, however, there are wells and eddies and surfaces along the way that make reading him pure joy. Act One, Snow with Tints of Then, revolves around the purchase, installation and increasingly desperate feeding of a giant wood-burning furnace to heat the buildings on Woiwode's farm during the record snow and cold of the winter months. Feeding the furnace and keeping it running become a real life or death obsession for Woiwode, and this struggle in turn becomes both a central metaphor for exploring the sources of his craft as a writer and a means of joining the disparate threads of his boyhood and family life. Act Two, Then with Tints of Snow, recounts, in a more chronological fashion, his university and early New York days, the beginning of his writing career and his friendship with the young Robert DeNiro."--BOOK JACKET.