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14 books that will have you running for the hills
14
items As much as a documentary or narrative feature set outdoors can scratch the nature itch when you can't run off to the backcountry yourself, neither comes close to the escapist power of an book that gets your cranial gears cranking. Sometimes, the land...
Sections
3
Fiction
Nonfiction
Children's
Fiction
When we meet the family at the heart of Karen Russell's Swamplandia!—a family running a gator wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades—we're already in wild territory. But when the matriarch suddenly falls ill and the Big tree family begins to ...
Swamplandia! (by Karen Russell)
Peter Heller is no stranger to the forests and valleys of the American West, but this one might just be his most heartfelt and evocative work to date. We follow Ren Hooper, a world weary but resolute National Park Service ranger, as he stumbles upon ...
The Last Ranger (by Peter Heller)
Imagine your childhood. Try to picture what might have happened if one day, your father had decided uproot the family to the wilds of northern Alaska, for a new, grueling, off-grid life. That's the narrative backbone of Kristin Hannah's exhilarating ...
The Great Alone (by Kristin Hannah)
Trees are some of the oldest, most enigmatic denizens of the earth, bearing witness to centuries of history. And over the course of those centuries, trees have been subject to the destructive impulses of mankind. Richard Powers weaves a story that sp...
The Overstory (by Richard Powers)
When two sisters, Inti and Aggie, join forces to help a team of scientists introduce a pack of grey wolves to the Scottish Highlands, things begin well, as the wolves adapt to their new habitat with ease. But when a local farmer suddenly turns up dea...
Once There Were Wolves (by Charlotte McConaghy)
Nonfiction
The Arctic is one of the most foreboding and barren places in the world; it's also one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring. In 1986, Barry Lopez released his groundbreaking and deeply researched chronicle of the frozen north. With fascinating ins...
Arctic Dreams (by Barry Lopez)
In 1977, as a teenager, Eustace Conway abandoned a materially comfortable but emotionally abusive life in suburban North Carolina and embedded in the Appalachian Mountains. Living off the land through all seasons and introducing others to the wild th...
The Last American Man (by Elizabeth Gilbert)
When we think of exploring the outdoors, not many of us would think of covering a region by swimming. But then, we're not Lynne Cox, a champion long-distance swimmer who's endured punishing races in dangerous waters like the Nile River and the shark-...
Swimming To Antarctica (by Lynne Cox)
Most hiking narratives tend to feature strong and competent characters who seem chipped out of granite: impressive but unrelatable. Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods is a refreshing and side-splittingly funny rebuttal to the idea that you need to be ...
A Walk in the Woods (by Bill Bryson)
Michelle Dowd grew up in California's Angeles National Forest, in the hands of a zealous religious cult organized around a doomsday prophecy. But as she learned about the ecology of the woods, getting to know its edible and medicinal plants, and its ...
Forager (by Michelle Dowd)
Children's
Robert McCloskey is best known for writing and illustrating Make Way For Ducklings, but this book is his environmental opus. A richly detailed and often poetic portrait of the Maine coast, before, during, and after a powerful sea storm, Time Of Wonde...
Time of Wonder (by Robert McCloskey)
There's a reason why We're Going On A Bear Hunt has enthralled kids and adults alike for decades. It's one of the best depictions of the curiosity that sends many of us into the wild, and the humbling moment when we suddenly realize, “Nope! I'm good”...
We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Rosen & Oxenbury
During spring and summer, the hills and coast of New England come alive with purple lupine flowers. And for much of this, we have to thank Miss Rumphius: a real-life legend who spread lupine seeds wherever she wandered. Barbara Cooney's account of Mi...
Miss Rumphius (by Barbara Cooney)
Okay…"children's book" might not be the most accurate label for J.R.R. Tolkien's classic adventure story. It's just as irresistible, if not more so, for many adults. But the tale of Bilbo Bagginsu—a Hobbit who steps out of his door one day and is pro...
The Hobbit (by J.R.R. Tolkien)