Need book rec's: Non-fiction adventure/exploration or drug-related

[patxi]

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger is a good book about his travels with the Bedouins on the Arabian penisula in the 40's.

[patxi]

Really, if you're at all interested in Kerouac then please respect the mans work by reading in the order he had intended and not his editors.

The Duluoz Legend

He didn't write them in chronological order so why should they be read in that order? I think that they are fine to read in whatever order you want as they all are decent-standalone reads. Similarly, I wouldn't find the tv series "Lost" worth watching if it was presented in chronological order.

[Knockneed Man]

I recently heard a more detailed account of the Whaleship Essex - the "true" story behind Moby Dick. Holy shit. True tale of survival, hard choices, dumb choices, heroics, the brutality of whaling, and the culture of whalers in Nantucket, MA in the early 1800s. I haven't read it yet, but a book on my summer list is going to be The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex by Owen Chase. Chase was the first mate on the Essex.

Read "The Heart of The Sea - The True Story of the Essex"

Mountaineering books:
My Life in the Mountains by Anderl Heckmair
The White Spider
Touching the Void
Eiger Dreams
The Climb
The Beckoning Silence
Into Thin Air

Diving:
Shadow Divers
Caverns Measureless to Man by Sheck Exley
Devils Teeth (Farallon island white sharks)

High: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler

Other non-fiction required reading:
Desert Solitaire - Abbey
Into the Wild
Endurance - Shackelton's Incredible Voyage

[marshalolson]

"crean" is the bio of tom crean who was on several of shakelton's expeditions is amazing as well. really really highly rec'd.

into the wild/into thin air - if you haven't read them, DO IT.

anything by reinhold messner. dude put the bad in badass. great writer, awesome stuff.

[Tuckerman]

I highly recommend the Carlos Castaneda books. The series starts with "The Teachings of Don Juan" (no, not that Don Juan) and chronicles his apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian medicine man. Has both the drug aspect and the adventure aspect. Give it a try.

+2 great reads.

[Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer]

This one sounds really interesting.

Marching Powder



http://www.amazon.com/Marching-Powde.../dp/0312330340

I read this. It was very entertaining. The micro-economy/society of the prison was unreal. Definitely recommend (and to the original poster, if you liked Killing Pablo, you will like this).

[4frntmorrison]

Getting Stoned With Savages and The Sex Lives of Cannibals, both by J. Maarten Troost, were good reads I thought. The author travels to an island in the pacific and experiments with a drug popular to the area called kava. But the books as a whole are more about the adjustments that him and his wife had to make coming from the US to a more uncivilized area. I thought they were very good reads

[LightRanger]

"Blood and Thunder" by Hampton Sides
About Kit Carson, Fremont, Kearny, et al. and the "winning of the West." Fantastic. I seriously can't recommend this book enough.

Ed Abbey

"Wind, Sand, and Stars"

[tylerjames]

Mr. Nice by Howard Marks, is an awesome book about an oxford grad who travels to india to buy marijuana and sells it all over the world. he goes into detail how he set up his whole operation.


Snowblind a brief career in the cocaine trade, by Robert Sabbag is about a guy from new york who decides to go to colombia in the 70s and search out a cocaine source and traffic it back to new york city. pretty detailed book but extremely enjoyable.