Forget the swoony film—Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa is a vibrant tale of African coffee farming and human perseverance. A must-read for any adventure bookshelf.
Required Reading for Explorers: Rachel Levin's Look Big and Other Tips for Surviving Animal Encounters of All Kinds
Required Reading for Explorers: F. A. Worsley’s Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure
Last night I finished F. A. Worsley’s 1931 publication of Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure (Norton, 2000). It was terrific! The author, Frank Worsley, was a New Zealand sea captain who saw action in WW1, did merchant work around Iceland, but most famously, skippered the Endurance. The Endurance was the ill-fated ship used by Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1916. It is also a fitting theme for this book.