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Our Favorite Adventure Books

When we aren’t out exploring the world for work or on personal travels, we read about exploring the world, other cultures, and magnificent places far from our home. Here are a few of our favorite adventure books. Please support your local independent bookstore!

Matt, Boundless Journeys Founder Extraordinaire: The World is My Home by James A. Michener
From Penguin Random House, “In this exceptional memoir, the man himself tells the story of his remarkable life and describes the people, events, and ideas that shaped it…his passion for travel; his lifelong infatuation with literature, music, and painting; his adventures in politics; and the hard work, headaches, and rewards of the writing life.”

Karen, safari manager and elephant enthusiast: Whatever You Do, Don’t Run by Peter Allison
From Rowman & Littlefield, “Peter Allison gives us the guide’s-eye view of living in the bush…No one could make up these outrageous-but-true tales…The author’s humor is exceeded only by his love and respect for the animals…” (Peter Allison used to work for Wilderness Safaris, our southern Africa partner!)

Deborah, trip manager and always-calming presence: Independent People by Halldor Laxness
From Penguin Random House, “If Bjartur of Summerhouses…is an ordinary sheep farmer [in Iceland], his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic… Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur’s spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills…”

Michelle, trip manager and lunch-time runner: Road to Valor by Aili and Andres McConnon
From Penguin Random House, “The inspiring, against-the-odds story of Gino Bartali, the cyclist who made the greatest comeback in Tour de France history and secretly aided the Italian resistance during World War II…including sheltering a family of Jews and smuggling counterfeit identity documents in the frame of his bicycle…it is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century.”

Kristen, trip manager and beginner yogi: Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli
From Penguin Random House, “Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolitan Los Angeles for a new adventure in the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan—said to be one of the happiest places on earth.”

Emily, trip manager and tiny dog afficianado: To Timbuktu by Mark Jenkins
From Publishers Weekly, “Mark and Mike are friends, both skilled climbers, swimmers, boaters and explorers, who one day decide to find the headwaters of the Niger River and make their way to Timbuktu…they paddle for days down treacherous, crocodile-infested waters. Eventually bored and exhausted, they decide they’ve had enough, but rather than abandon their ultimate goal, the author motorcycles across the Sahara to Timbuktu.”

Katya, marketing manager and pre-work XC skier: Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
From Penguin Random House, “In 1995, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the States for a few years with his family, Bill Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of the nation’s public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite…”

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