Book Smackdown: The Best Adventure Biography Ever
In our November issue we ranked the 10 best adventure biographies of all time. We were inspired to write the list after reading an incredibly solid bio of Jacques Cousteau by Brad Matsen. We're pretty sure our list is definitive. Still, if you disagree, let us know. However slim, there's always a chance we'll revisit our rankings.
Tell us what you think in the comments section below. What is the best adventure biography of all time?
--Joe Spring
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October 19, 2009
Documentaries We Like: Paddle to Seattle
The idea of Paddle to Seattle may sound a bit contrived, two dudes build their own kayaks and then paddle the 1200-mile North American Inside Passage from Alaska to Seattle. But from the moment this documentary starts, it's clear that it will not watch as slow as the 3-miles-an-hour, 15-miles-a-day pace that the main characters paddle. The two buddies make so many of the hardships in the movie a playful learning experience, from deciding on a title to weathering the hospital-inducing "dirty turkey squirts," that you get lost in the journey.
The friends open themselves to the local customs and foods they encounter along the trip, from eating Ludefisk in a Norwegian fishing community to attempting to eat a half gallon of ice cream in one sitting with a local kayaker they befriend.
We won't ruin the movie by attempting to describe any scenes in specific detail. We will say that if you enjoy sea kayaking and are looking for a good buddy movie, this fills the niche. If you need more of an endorsement, Paddler Magazine called Paddle to Seattle "80 minutes of the best feature film about paddling produced in the last decade."
Check out the trailer above, and the web site for more overall info.
--Joe Spring
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September 22, 2009
Book Trailer: The World's Most Dangerous Mountain
In his latest book, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain, Ed Viesturs focuses on the six most dramatic seasons on K2, trusting his instincts, and finally summitting this Holy Grail. Viesturs was the first American to climb all three of the world's tallest peaks. The book will be on shelves October 13th. See more at the Adventure Blog.
--Alison Kelman
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September 16, 2009
Roz Savage Rows for the Environment
Roz Savage arrives in Tarawa (courtesy of Roz Savage)
Roz Savage has just finished the second stage of her solo row across the Pacific, which, if completed, would make her the first woman ever to accomplish this feat. She's doing this not only to challenge herself but to bring awareness to environmental issues. Each stage of her three-part journey has a green theme attached to it. The first stage, which took place in the summer of 2008 between California and Hawaii, was focused on encouraging people to decrease their use of plastic bottles. The second stage, during which Savage rowed from Hawaii to the atoll of Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati, was focused on climate change.
Savage's autobiography, Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean, will be out in October 2009. The next and final stage of her bid to row solo across the Pacific will take place April 2010, when she will be rowing towards Australia. Check out her Twitter page for updates.
--Aileen Torres
What motivated you to do this solo row?
I think I was going through an early mid-life crisis. I'd worked in an office for 11 years and got to my mid-30s and was living a perfectly normal life in West London, and if I was ever going to do something out of the ordinary I needed to probably get on and do it soon. And I suppose I was really motivated by the personal challenge. I wanted to put myself in a situation where I could find out what I was capable of, and the best way to do that seemed to be on my own, as far away from civilization as possible and just prove how self-sufficient I could be. There was also a lot of soul-searching going on around this stage as well. There was an environmental awakening going on at the same time, and I felt that by doing this and sharing it online, that would give me an opportunity to blog about the things I really care about, and those things include personal challenge--growth through personal challenge--and taking a responsible attitude towards the environment. I suppose it's the ultimate carbon-neutral journey.
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September 09, 2009
Galleries We Like: The California Surf Project
One of our photo editors, Amy Silverman, has kept a book by her computer for a month or so now called The California Surf Project. More than once when I've been down in her office I've thumbed through it. Each time I find a new favorite picture.
This time its the black and white above—a guy biking toward the coast only to find a thicket awaiting him. Even if he didn't find a trail, I'm pretty sure he walked right through the scrum. That's the "I'm doing it" feeling you get from photographer Chris Burkard's book about driving, biking, and hiking the California coast to catch some waves.
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September 08, 2009
Bradford Washburn Remembered
Old Man of the Mountains
A new biography lionizes America’s first high-altitude hero
When he died at age 96, Bradford Washburn was hailed as Alaska’s greatest mountaineer, an innovative museum director, and a mountain photographer second only to the great Vittorio Sella. In The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer (Morrow, $26), David Roberts shows what it takes to be an outdoor renaissance man: courage, the ability to suffer gladly, and an eye for the receding edge of exploration. A good day job also helps. While at Harvard, Washburn became entranced with Alaska, and from 1930 to the mid-1950s his climbs in the St. Elias and Alaska ranges helped open the door to mountaineering in the far north. His stunning black and white photos—taken with a 53-pound camera from the open doors of airplanes—offered him a career as a photographer, but Washburn instead took over a dusty natural history museum and transformed it into the thriving Boston Museum of Science. Roberts recounts episodes that range from the delightfully trivial (our hero nearly became Amelia Earhart’s navigator on her final flight) to the profound (a floatplane accident on Seattle’s Lake Union killed two friends and haunted Washburn—the pilot—for life). Although he counted Washburn as a friend, Roberts doesn’t gloss over less-than-glorious episodes: A broken engagement, a son’s criminal conviction, and a personal rift that led to Washburn’s absence from the American expeditions to K2 in 1938 and 1953. Washburn climbed boldly but wasn’t given to outrageous behavior, and in this telling he comes across as a Jimmy Stewart-of-the-mountains, a stand-up family man who embraced adventure and lived life decently and well. —BRUCE BARCOTT
For an exclusive gallery of Washburn photographs from our September 2005 issue click here.
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September 04, 2009
Let Us Now Praise Trees
*Bonus: The paper is FSC-certified, so no 'wild' trees gave their lives for this book.
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September 03, 2009
Galleries We Like: After The Storm
Over the course of the next month, timed with the release of our upcoming Photo Issue, we'll be calling out some of our favorite photographers.
We're starting off with one of the most striking surf projects we've seen in a while, After the Storm, by Chris Bickford. The Outer Banks resident shot a series of stunning black and whites about the North Carolina surf scene. While the initial story was done for David Alan Harvey's excellent photo blog Burn (now an online magazine), in the months following it has been picked up by outlets like American Journal and The New York Times.
The gallery and corresponding essay capture the gritty, take-it-as-it-comes nature of surfers living on the Outer Banks. Fickle weather and shifting breaks make finding and catching the perfect wave a crap shoot. Those that love to ride have to search out waves, and they often have to wait for storms to find bigger waves. In the end, they must be able to give up everyday life at a moment's notice for a chance to enjoy their sport.
A life of surf is not conducive to the rhythms of the workaday world. Surf has no schedule. It comes on a Monday morning as often as it comes on a Sunday afternoon–which is why very little ever gets done on time around here. If the surf is up, or the fish are running, responsibilities will get put on hold. Kids will play hookie, construction workers will walk off the job site, even realtors will sneak in a midday session. The work will get done, eventually; but the swell won’t wait for quitting time. You have to strike when it’s hot, even if it means pissing a few people off. Surf-consciousness breeds a certain nonchalance about the rest of the world that can drive outsiders crazy. (From Burn)
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No Impact Man: Inspiration or Stuntman?
The No Impact Man world tour launches this week. Colin Beavan’s book about a year of living conscientiously—or, as the New York Times put it, without toilet paper—arrived on bookshelves yesterday, and an accompanying documentary, starring Beavan’s most tolerant wife, BusinessWeek reporter Michelle Conlin and their toddler daughter, Isabella, opens in New York and Los Angeles later this month.
Beavan has been weathering criticism since starting his experiment in 2006, but public debate over No Impactism recently hit fever pitch. The Beavan supporters—including Bill McKibben, Grist's Jonathan Hiskes, and New York magazine film critic David Edelstein—see the project as funny, informative, and inspirational. Critics have included the Breakthrough Institute's Michael Shellenberger, but the harshest words have come from New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the acclaimed Field Notes from a Catastrophe, who delivered a fiery smackdown of Beavan's book in last week’s issue.
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August 31, 2009
Adventure Lit 101
Today the New York Times published a front-page story on a teacher in a public middle school outside of Atlanta who eschews a fixed literature curriculum and allows her students read whatever they choose. Twilight, Harry Potter, Steinbeck, Jack London, Bill Watterson—it's all good. The paper calls this tactic "part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America's schools." If that's the case, the hippie elementary school I attended was far ahead of the curve: We could always opt out of assigned activities to go sit outside and read.
I'm a huge believer in the tactic—I found it particularly useful during math class—and apparently America finds the idea intriguing, too: the Times story is the paper's third most emailed today, ranking just behind a trend story on Facebook quitters. (How's that for a fun juxtaposition?)
So, what adventure classics should America's youth be choosing from? I solicited some suggestions from the Outside editorial staff. Here's the resulting conversation. No one's feelings were too badly hurt. -- Abe Streep
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