1. The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922) As War and Peace is to novels, so is The Worst Journey in the World to the literature of polar travel: the one to beat. The author volunteered as a young man to go to the Antarctic with Robert Falcon Scott in 1910; that, and writing this book, are the only things of substance he ever did in life. They were enough.
National Geographic Books, 2002.

2. Journals, by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814) Are there two American explorers more famous? Were there any braver? When they left St. Louis in 1804 to find a water route to the Pacific, no one knew how extensive the Rocky Mountains were or even exactly where they were, and the land beyond was terra incognita. Lewis and Clark's Journals are the closest thing we have to a national epic, and they are magnificent, full of the wonder of the Great West.
National Geographic Books, 2002. Editor Elliott Coues published the definitive text of the Lewis and Clark journals in 1893, now available in a three-volume set entitled The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Dover Publications, 1979). A new, abridged version is The Essential Lewis and Clark (HarperCollins, 2000).

3. Wind, Sand & Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1940) Saint-Exupéry was without question the great pilot-poet of the air. And this remarkable classic attains its high ranking here by soaring both as a piece of writing and as a tale of adventure. It was Saint-Exupéry's job in the 1920s to fly the mail from France to Spain across the Pyrenees, in all kinds of weather, with bad maps and no radio.
Harcourt Brace, 1992.

4. Exploration of the Colorado River, by John Wesley Powell (1875) Powell lost most of his right arm fighting for the Union, but that didn't stop him from leading the first descent of the Grand Canyon. The year was 1869, and he and his nine men started on the Green River in wooden boats.
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (National Geographic Books, 2002).

5. Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger (1959) The southern Arabian desert, a quarter million square miles of sand (650,000 square kilometers), is now a place of oil wells and Land Rovers, but before the 1950s it was still known as the Empty Quarter, a place you entered only on camel and only as an Arab. Only a few white men had ever seen it, much less crossed it.
Viking, 1985.

6. Annapurna, by Maurice Herzog (1952) No one had ever climbed an 8,000-meter (26,250-ft.) peak when Herzog led a team of the best climbers in France to Annapurna in 1950. Maps were sketchy and inadequate; they had trouble even finding the peak.
Lyons Press, 1997.

7. Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey (1968) Abbey is our very own desert father, a hermit loading up on silence and austerity and the radical beauty of empty places. Early on he spent summers working as a ranger at Utah's Arches National Monument, and those summers were the source for this book of reverence for the wild—and outrage over its destruction.
Simon and Schuster, 1990.

8. West With the Night, by Beryl Markham (1942) "A bloody wonderful book," Ernest Hemingway called it, and so it is—Africa from the seat of an Avro biplane, winged prose, if you will, about the lion that mauled her, about the Masai and the Kikuyu, about flying over the Serengeti, searching for the downed plane of her lover. It appears that Markham's third husband, writer Raoul Schumacher, contributed much of the literary polish.
North Point Press, 2001.

9. Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer (1997) Was it fate that put Krakauer—at once a crack climber, a seasoned journalist, and a sensitive conscience—on the world's highest mountain during that notorious 1996 season? Unpredictable weather, human folly, and a mind-set committed to client satisfaction killed 12 people on Everest that year, while the whole world watched.
Anchor, 1999.

10. Travels, by Marco Polo (1298) Polo dictated these tales to a scribe, a writer of romances named Rustichello, while the two men shared a cell in a Genoese prison. Just how much Rustichello added to the text nobody knows. Yet most of what Polo tells us about his overland journey to Asia checks out. He traveled during a relatively peaceful time, so this is not a book about taking physical risks. The Travels of Marco Polo, in two volumes (Dover Publications, 1993).

The Whole List

1. The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander

2. Trail of Feathers: In Search of the Birdmen of Peru by Tahir Shah

3. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T.E. Lawrence

4. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose

5. 8 Men and a Duck: An Improbable Voyage by Reed Boat to Easter Island by Nick J. Thorpe

6. The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo, Manuel Komroff, editor

7. West with the Night by Beryl Markham

8. Tracks: The Exhilarating True Story of a Woman's Solo Trek across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback by Robyn Davidson

With beautiful prose, Antoine de Saint-Exupery describes his adventureous flights over the Pyrenees, Andes and Sahara.  Probably the best book ever written about flying. B&N.com: More Information

2. (Tie) The Worst Journey in the World.  By Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922)

Cherry-Garrard's "worst" journey takes place during the Antarctic winter before Robert Falcon Scott's famous race against Roald Amundsen to the South Pole. A member of Scott's expedition, Cherry-Garrard and two others undertake an expedition to collect the eggs of the emperor penguin.  On the way there and back, they struggle with back-breaking loads, long-dark days and numbingly cold temperatures.  It's an incredible story, narrated with great finesse.  B&N.com: More Information

2. (Tie) Journals.  By Meriwether Lews and  William Clark (1841)

The story of Lewis and Clark's remarkable journey across the American west told by the great explorers themselves.  B&N.com: More Information

3. West With the Night.  By Beryl Markham (1942)

There must be some kind of connection between flying and poetic writing.  Like Antoine de Saint-Exupery (see # 1 above), Markham is a pilot, and her writing is entrancing--as entrancing as the African landscape she soars above.  B&N.com: More Information

4. The Snow Leopard.  By Peter Matthiessen (1978) 

Matthiessen accompanies biologist George Schaller on a 250-mile trek through the Himalayan mountains.  Schaller's purpose is to study blue sheep. Along the way, Matthiessen hopes to catch a glimpse of the exceedingly rare snow leopard but the journey becomes much more.  Coming shortly after the death of his wife, it becomes a contemplative and enlightening look at life.  See More Extensive Review.   B&N.com: More Information 

Edward Abbey is the undisputed the voice of the remote canyonland country of southern Utah and Northern Arizona.  No book describes this harsh landscape better and with more hard-nose poignancy than Desert Solitare.  B&N.com: More Information 

In 1914 Ernest Shackleton set off on a journey to traverse the Antarctic continent via the South Pole.  Frank (F. A.) Worsley was the captain of the Shackleton's ship.  The ship, named Endurance, never made it to the coast, becoming frozen in the pack ice.  Things went from bad to worse.  The following year, Worsley watched his ship crushed and destroyed by the mammoth forces created by shifting floes of ice.  Their escape climaxed by an 800-mile journey in a small, open boat to St. Georgia Island. Their route: across one of the most dangerous and capricious stretches of cold, open ocean anyway on the globe.  Navigation was vitally important.  One tiny error and they would miss St. Georgia and end up lost in the vastness of the southern Ocean.  Frank Worsley was the navigator--and this is Worsley's engrossing narrative of that epic journey.  B&N.com: More Information.

In 1895, Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston.  Three years later, he returned, making the first solo circumnavigation of the globe.  B&N.com: More Information.

This is Krakauer's study of an idealistic young man who leaves everything behind and heads into the Alaska bush.  A few months later, he is found dead.  While Krakauer obviously padded the book to make it an acceptable length, it is, nevertheless, a haunting parable of the search for meaning in modern day life.  B&N.com: More Information.

When I first traveled to Eagle, Alaska to kayak some of the tributaries of the Yukon River, I had my copy of Coming into the Country along.  In his precise and crisp prose, McPhee gives us an encompassing and perceptive glimpse of the north star state from its cities to its vast wild lands.  B&N.com: More Information.

In the late 1940's the Empty Quarter of the Saudi Arabian desert remained a mystery to much of the outside world.  Into that mystery, Thesiger went.  B&N.com: More Information

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