100 Books Like Enduring Patagonia

I bought this because 1) I loved Le Petit Prince, 2) I had no idea that de Saint-Exupery was a pilot and disappeared over the Mediterranean in 1944, and 3) I thought it might give me a window into what my own late dad found in flight and that it might bring me closer to him in a way.

I was not prepared for the excruciating, almost sacred, tenderness of his thoughts on the nature of earth and sea, war, life, death, and the entire human enterprise. If your spirit has ever yearned or fluttered at such thoughts, there is salvation in these essays. Wow! His final essay on Barcelona and Madrid is luxurious beyond words. It took forever to finish it because I regaled myself on every sentence.

This book hit me as both tragic and strangely hopeful.

Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness with little more than a backpack and a stubborn streak, and people have argued ever since: was he brave, reckless, or just plain stupid? But his compulsion isn’t as rare as we might think. In my book, Cole feels the same tug—escape the sterile shoebox apartment and the $8 lattes. This can’t be all there is.

What drew me in wasn’t the verdict but his hunger for something real—stripping away every layer of artifice most of us cling to. Krakauer tells it with empathy and curiosity, letting you wrestle with the questions instead of handing you neatly typed answers. I recommend it because it forces you to stare down your own compromises: freedom versus responsibility, idealism versus pragmatism.

Admire Chris or dismiss him, you won’t forget him. And the story lingers like a… show more.

Why is it that looking at the past, reading our history, studying ancient ruins, makes me feel better about facing today’s world?

I think about connection, a feeling that, despite having lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, there are still shared goals and commonalities between myself and them. 

Harari is one of those rare authors who can distill enormous amounts of information into a single sentence and hold your attention at the same time. Early in the book, Harari explains that as humans evolved to walk upright, the narrowing of the pelvis and hips made childbirth more treacherous. His line for this: “Women paid extra.” As a mother myself, when I read that line, it felt so modern, so lived-in, like the same line could describe my own feelings today.

Books like Sapiens aren’t really about the biology of humans, but about finding our humanity within a scientific exploration.… show more.

This is one of the best armchair travel books out there. I can’t surf and don’t know the first thing about surfing, but Finnegan’s personal story of chasing waves from continent to continent throughout the 60s and 70s had me nostalgic for a life I’ve never led.

He takes risks and roughs it in ways I never would, but his depictions of places like Madagascar, Hawaii, and Indonesia are so enticing I yearned to hop a plane every time I got to a new chapter. It’s easy to see why Finnegan won a Pulitzer for this autobiography—his writing made for an un-put-downable escape.

As a woman in her 30s, I’m expected to know whether I want children. And that I should have them. And soon.

Majka vulnerably shares the trade-offs of having unexpected twins while she was peaking athletically and, as an entrepreneur, in a world where we don’t often get to peek at that nuance.

I’m afraid that if I have kids, I’ll lose my athletic passion. I’ll lose friends. I’ll lose my current body. But also, I would gain so much, as seen by how Majka describes her ever-evolving relationship with her husband, her twins, her company, and her sport.

My passions are what drive me to wake up every day. If I choose to have kids, they’ll wake me up every day, and I’m fascinated by that overlap of passion and motherhood. I highlighted lines all over this book to remind me of the challenges, trade-offs, and beauty of living… show more.

I read this story as a young woman in the mid-eighties before embarking on my solo hike in Nepal, and it has stayed with me ever since. Arlene Blum recounts her experience leading an all-woman mountaineering expedition in 1978, the first of its kind to climb a peak above 8000 meters.

The different personalities of these brave climbers jumped off the page. When I first read the book, I thought, if they could climb Annapurna, then maybe I could simply trek around it. Blum writes about her fierce determination to break gender barriers while being honest about her leadership challenges. She has continued to inspire me in her career as an adventurer, scientist, and activist ever since.

This to me is the encyclopedia of wilderness survival.

It features content from various books and authors related to survival and wilderness living, and it’s a very good reference book due to the vastness of the topics covered.

The first time I browsed it I was immediately surprised by how comprehensive it was. I feel that this book complements very well the other books on my list. The fact that it contains sections from multiple authors means you get a diverse and well-rounded perspective of the many skills and techniques covered.

This book also has some long-term, expedition, and bushcraft angles, rather than a strictly survival approach.

A superbly written account of, perhaps, the most famous British naturalist-explorer, Charles Darwin, on his great voyage aboard HMS Beagle to Patagonia and the Galápagos in 1831-6. The author also covers the furious aftermath, the debate resulting from Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) findings and contentious, to some seemingly blasphemous, theory on the origin of species. Profusely illustrated in colour with contemporary material. I have read and long admired several of Moorhead’s books and particularly enjoyed this one as it deals with a personal hero of mine.

I’ve been drawn to the mountains since I was a child and reading this book helped hugely in explaining my fascination with this terrain.

It details how man was initially fearful of the mountains and how that situation changed from the 17th century on, and looks at early attempts to explore and understand these highlands, with a particular focus on mountaineering. It’s beautifully written and very engaging.

This is the Everest Bible. It has it all: every fact, every myth, every attempt, every failure, and the ultimate success. By rights, this book shouldn’t really work—so many attempts, so many near-misses, so many personality clashes, so many tragedies—but somehow it builds. The personalities are outsized, of course, the egos gigantic, and that helps, but the mountain is just too famous to ever be dull.