38 Books Like Uttermost Part of the Earth

This is a hero’s journey, right out of Joseph Campbell: a young man goes to sea, circumnavigates the globe, and experiences marvel after marvel of nature. What he learns on his journey matures into a kind of wisdom that transforms the world.

Darwin’s adventures keep me on the edge of my seat; his descriptions seduce me; his ideas inspire me. I want to be there with him as he recoils from the horrors of slavery in Brazil or observes the aftermath of a Chilean earthquake. And I feel I truly am with him, collecting birds and lizards on the islands of the Galapagos, as he begins to divine the answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the world.

Bill Tilman was a war hero and an accomplished Himalayan climber – reaching 27,000 feet on Everest without oxygen in 1938 – who turned in later life to sailing as a means of accessing obscure mountain ranges. In 1956 he sailed his Bristol Channel pilot cutter (Mischief) from England to the Chilean channels and made the first successful crossing of the Patagonian ice cap. Tilman was likely not easy to get on with – he tolerates no women on board, and on this particular cruise we never learn the first name of his deputy – but his writing is erudite and amusingly self-deprecating. This narrative concludes with the dry comment: “Ships are all right – it's the men in them.” Tilman sailed to the very end. He disappeared at sea in 1977, in his eightieth year, en route to climb a remote island peak in Antarctica. Would that… show more.

In 1986, New Zealander Gerry Clark set off on what would turn out to be a three-year circumnavigation of Antarctica aboard his home-built plywood yacht Totorore. The ostensible objective was a study of seabirds – notably albatrosses – but this is no ornithological treatise. In the Chilean channels and the intricate waterways around Tierra del Fuego, Totorore and her crew lurch from one near disaster to another, each recounted Tilman-like in an understated style. Later, he is dismasted twice and the voyage becomes a desperate struggle for survival. We were lucky enough to meet Gerry – and have him sign a copy of this book – in 1990; it’s rightly described as “one of the most remarkable small boat adventures of all time.” Tototore and crew disappeared one night in 1999, en route to retrieve satellite transmitters from albatrosses on Antipodes Island, off New Zealand. 

In the 1960s and 70s, Americans Hal and Margaret Roth popularized long-distance ocean cruising in the USA much as Eric and Susan Hiscock did in the UK. In a series of accessible and well-illustrated books Hal narrated their adventures sailing all over the world, aboard a 35-ft sloop called Whisper. The climactic moment of his story of their 1978 voyage from California through the Chilean channels is starkly summed up at the end of Chapter Eight: “We were shipwrecked on uninhabited islands only a few miles from Cape Horn.” Whisper’s crew live on a beach for nine days, are rescued by the Chilean navy then come back to re-float her. Our copy of this book still has stains, from four years on board Bosun Bird in those same waters. Every time I look at the double-page spread of Whisper on the rocks I shiver and think: “There but… show more.

Neither novel nor travel book, this classic journey defies category.

Purportedly a quest for a scrap of giant slothskin, which the author finds in a cave in southern Chile, it zig-zags through time and space, alighting on travellers from Magellan to Butch Cassidy, while trampling down conventional boundaries.

“Everyone says: ‘Are you writing a novel?’ No, I’m writing a story and I do rather insist that things must be called stories. That seems to me to be what they are. I don’t quite know the meaning of the word novel.” 

Even after I became a traveler, I found myself pulled into Bruce Chatwin's writings because of his ability to make you feel more than just a location.

His stories about nomadic people and exotic places blend fact with fiction to give a fuller picture. I’ve read all of his work, but this book made me feel he was a kindred spirit.

One story in particular, Milk, captured the raw yearning to dive head-first into a foreign culture and made me a lifelong fan.

I particularly enjoyed this book. Hudson’s ornithological expedition in this desolate wilderness was made partly ‘idle’ by the mishap he had when examining a faulty pistol, shooting himself in the knee.

He described his solitary confinement in a remote cabin while his sole companion went off to seek help. He shared his bed with a venomous snake, and was later ferried to hospital by bullock cart, a journey of many hours over rough terrain.

"My miserable journey ended at dawn at the Mission House. Later in the day, on awakening, I found myself in the hands of a gentleman who was a skilful surgeon as well as a divine. My bullet, however, refused to be extracted. Every morning for a fortnight my host, with a quiet smile on his lips, would present a succession of probes – oh those probes of all forms, sizes and materials: wood, ivory, steel and… show more.

I love how this book captures the spirit and obsession of climbing in Patagonia; the characters, the landscape, the majesty of the peaks, and our struggles to climb them. Crouch took me there years before I ever went. His devotion to climbing and his depth of experiences, from the harrowing to the mundane (in the endless boredom of waiting for good weather he declares himself “the Muhammad Ali of killing time”) shine in his writing. The book speaks to the obsessed, by the obsessed. It’s a cult classic among Patagonia alpine climbers for good reason.

Patagonia’s founder doesn’t just talk about building a company—he talks about building one with conscience. I admire how he defines success as humble and fiercely independent. This book is a manifesto for aligning profit with purpose and mission with mindfulness. It challenges entrepreneurs to think not just about revenue, but about the legacy they want to leave behind.

I loved this book because it gave me a behind-the-scenes look at a company I admired from afar but didn’t really know. I’d heard about Patagonia’s commitment to sustainability, but reading about how they actually implement their values—through design, materials, and a “repair, not replace” philosophy—was eye-opening. I also connected deeply with Chouinard’s memoir-style reflections. I appreciated his raw honesty, his resistance to conventional business wisdom, and how he stayed true to his principles. Those are all approaches that deeply resonate with me.

I often fail to see the close connection between the culture at sea in centuries past and how some of that has persisted to this day, both at sea and in many aspects of our culture, especially science.

This book hit me squarely between the eyes with that. I was deliciously captured within the pages of the story both for some of the unsettling, even shocking descriptions of hardships back in that day (and would I have been able to survive were I in that circumstance, even as a woman) and the cautionary tale it brings about loyalty, ethics, courage, and just plain doing your job to the best of your ability.