The Modern Explorers

Hanbury-Tenison (president, Survival International; The Seventy Great Journeys in History) and Twigger (The Extinction Club), two active explorers themselves, have edited a beautifully produced volume about their peers. The editors define explorers as those who make "difficult, and often dangerous, unique journeys to bring back news (scientific, topographic, cultural, psychological) from distant lands" and state that "adventure is to exploration what story is to the novel." The book is divided into eight sections: polar, desert, rainforest, mountain, ocean, river, under sea/under land, and lost worlds. The majority of entries are first-person accounts by the explorers themselves about career highlights, major expeditions, or pivotal adventures. Every piece is a highlight, from Rannulph Fiennes's "Frostbitten Fingers" and Mikael Strandberg's year crossing Siberia to Paralympic athlete Karen Darke's 4,000-plus pull-ups on one of El Capitan's climbing routes and Johan Reinhard's famous discoveries and photographs of Inca mummies in the Andes. The only drawback? Each entry is relatively brief, leaving the reader wanting more—they can get ideas from the selected bibliography.