Adventure Biography

In Chinese, the closest expression to oh my god is wo de ma ya. It’s an interjection, a polite expletive, something to say when you’re out of words. Translated literally, it means oh my mother—the instinctual first person you think of when you’re on the cusp of losing it, or putting it all together.

James Capen Adams roamed the Sierra Nevada when California was wild. He slept on the ground, ate what he could kill, mended his own wounds, and made friends with the Native Americans he encountered. Adams captured animals in elaborate traps he built by hand and delivered his prey to zoos, museums, and certain famous exhibitions. Many of his stories became the inspiration for a popular TV show in the 1980s, featuring a mountain man and his pet bear. This is the true story behind the legend, as told by Adams to respected California historian Theodore Hittell.

Enjoy this volume of Aged in Saltwater with 55 color photographs throughout the interior.

Larry Brilliant's life journey has led him on a purposeful path across continents and countercultural movements, marching arm in arm with the men and women who defined a generation. A man who has always been in the right place at the right time, Brilliant has engaged with some of the most prominent thought leaders, spiritual masters, heroes, and icons in the world, including Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wavy Gravy, the Grateful Dead, the Dalai Lama, and Barack Obama.

For a moment in the 1980s, Carolyn Pfeiffer was the only woman in Hollywood who could greenlight a movie. Working with directors like Sam Shepard and Wes Craven, and with actors like River Phoenix and Bette Davis, she had a hand in producing or distributing many landmark films, among them Ridley Scott's The Duellists, Alan Rudolph's Choose Me, and the Academy Award-winning Kiss of the Spider Woman. However, long before establishing herself as a player in the world of film, Carolyn was a horseback-riding tomboy who dreamed of exploring the world beyond her small hometown.

This 148-day journey began on Darcy Gaechter’s 35th birthday. She sold her successful outdoor adventure business, upsetting her partner and boyfriend of 12 years and getting them both fired in the process. The emotional waters that would fester and erupt on the ensuing journey were often more challenging to navigate than the mighty river itself. With blistering lips and irradiated fingernails, Darcy would tackle raging Class Five whitewater for 25 days straight, barely surviving a dynamite-filled canyon being prepared for a new hydroelectric plant.

Outdoor journalist James Edward Mills's book The Adventure Gap is a groundbreaking volume that is equal parts adventure story, history, and inspiration as it chronicles the first American all-Black summit attempt on Denali in 2013. Mills uses this momentous expedition as a jumping-off point to explore diversity in the outdoors, from Mathew Henson who stood at the North Pole in 1909 to contemporary adventurers such as polar explorer Barbara Hillary and rock climber Kai Lightner.

Hollywood producer Hopwood DePree had been told as a boy that an ancestor—who he was named for—had left his family’s English castle in the 1700s to come to America. One night after some wine and a visit to Ancestry.com, Hopwood discovered a photograph of a magnificent English estate with a familiar name: Hopwood Hall, a 60-room, 600-year-old grand manor on 5,000 acres. And with that, Hopwood DePree’s life took an almost fairytale turn.

Merging memoir, anecdotes, and masterclasses on guitar, songwriting, and the artist's mindset, Lay It on the Line offers insight and perspective into the many roles Rik Emmett took on. "It" was always a parboiling, psychological gumbo: and this book attempts to finally share the recipe.

UPCOTE, a self-styled gentleman of leisure who subsidises his state hand-outs with a little wheeling and dealing on the side meets the struggling SMYTHE and sets out to help his young protégé of fifty-three fulfil his true and hitherto well-concealed potential. With the help of Upcote’s indomitable Aunt Mabel and under the sceptical scrutiny of coin-obsessed café owner Bob, the two men set out to put their sartorial and cultural superiority on a sound financial footing. Dodging the slings and arrows of outraged punters our two heroes push, swerve and stumble onwards towards their dream...

Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Keena's funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there's any place where she truly fits in.

Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder - a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places McClure has never been to yet somehow knows by heart. She traces the pioneer journey of the Ingalls family - looking for the Big Woods among the medium trees in Wisconsin, wading in Plum Creek, and enduring a prairie hailstorm in South Dakota. She immerses herself in all things Little House - exploring the story from fact to fiction, and from the TV shows to the annual summer pageants in Laura’s hometowns.

Before he grew up and became one of Washington's most respected reporters and editors, Andrew Ferguson was, of all things, a Lincoln buff, with the photos hung on his bedroom wall to prove it. Decades later, Ferguson's latent buffdom is reignited. In Land of Lincoln, he embarks on a curiosity-fueled coast-to-coast journey through contemporary Lincoln Nation, encountering everything from hatred to adoration to opportunism and all manner of reaction in between.

In 2005, Vanessa Woods accepted a marriage proposal from a man she barely knew and agreed to join him on a research trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country reeling from a brutal decade-long war that had claimed the lives of millions. Settling in at a bonobo sanctuary in Congo's capital, Vanessa and her fiancee entered the world of a rare ape with whom we share 98.7 percent of our DNA.

Living On Air is a coming of age tale about a small town boy who makes it to the top of his profession in the world of radio and voice-over. It's a heart-warming, funny story filled with the ups and downs people face on the roller-coaster ride to success, including some laughable encounters with major celebrities. Living On Air is narrated by author, Joe Cipriano, considered one of the top voice-over talents in America. Instantly recognizable as the voice of TV networks, award shows, games shows and more.

Just as Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations did for the world of food, Dopeworld is an intoxicating journey into the world of drugs. From the cocaine farms in South America to the streets of Manila, Dopeworld traces the emergence of psychoactive substances and our intimate relationship with them. As a former drug dealer turned subversive scholar, with unparalleled access to drug lords, cartel leaders, street dealers, and government officials, journalist Niko Vorobyov attempts to shine a light on the dark underbelly of the drug world.

With the utterance of a single line - "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" - a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure - defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement.

Based on a true story originally written by one of the survivors, Neta Lohnes Frazier's account of seven children traveling westward still has the power to astonish. In the 1840s, the Sager family set off on the Oregon Trail, a dangerous and adventure-filled journey. Tragedy struck when both the mother and father succumbed to fever, orphaning the youngsters - one just a newborn. The entire wagon train adopted them, until they arrived at the Whitman Mission in Oregon.

In this audiobook Newman and Hotchner recount the picaresque saga of their own nonmanagement adventure. In alternating voices, playing off one another in classic “Odd Couple” style, they describe how they systematically disregarded the advice of experts and relied instead on instinct, imagination, and mostly luck. They write about how they hurdled obstacle after obstacle, share their hilarious misadventures, and reveal their offbeat solutions to conventional problems.

When Guirec Soudée was 21 years old, he bought a 30-foot sailboat and set out across the Atlantic, despite having only sailed a dinghy before. His only companion? His plucky pet hen, Monique. Guirec never intended to sail the world with a chicken, but after reaching the Caribbean, he and Monique made for Greenland - and emerged from the pack ice 100 days later.