Your favorite athletes, explorers, and environmentalists鈥攖hey鈥檙e just like you! At least in the sense that they can be nerdy about books. We asked them to share which titles have stuck with them, and in the spirit of a good old-fashioned book club, we dug up some new picks that hit the same notes of adventure, awe, and 鈥渉ow the hell did they do that鈥 that inspired them in the first place.
Clare Gallagher
Ultrarunner and environmental advocate Clare Gallagher likes to read adventure stories about sports other than her own. Todd Balf鈥檚 , which chronicles an attempted first descent, in 1998, down Tibet鈥檚 Tsangpo River, scratches all her literary itches. It鈥檚 a river narrative and a deep portrait of place that touches on the workings of extreme expeditions and relationships. Gallagher first read it in high school and says it influenced her decision to study ecology in college. But more than that, the paddlers鈥 hard-nosed drive for exploration has shaped how she approaches epics. 鈥淚 continually think back to this book as it reminds me of the fragility of life while inspiring me to charge after my dreams,鈥 Gallagher says. 鈥淭he passion of the team was palpable. They planned this trip for years. They trained like maniacs, pored over maps, and packed for months. It inspires me to dream big, plan big, and execute big.鈥
New Recommendation: Holly Fitzgerald鈥檚 honeymoon story sounds made up. Partway through their yearlong trip, she and her new husband are in a plane crash in the remote Peruvian jungle. Their only way out is by river on a small, disintegrating raft. It鈥檚 all true, and her book about the trip, , touches on the themes Gallagher loves: adventure, relationships in tough situations, and being stronger and more capable than you think.
Jess Phoenix
Phoenix, a volcanologist and California congressional candidate who cofounded the ecosystem-cataloging nonprofit , read Jules Verne鈥檚 as a kid growing up on the East Coast. At the time, her scope of the world was pretty small, but reading Verne opened her up to the possibility of much bigger things. 鈥淭hat has stuck with me as I鈥檝e led scientific expeditions on four continents and done work on six,鈥 Phoenix says. 鈥淏ecause of Around the World in 80 Days, I internalized early on that the journey really can be as interesting as the destination. I have been able to take Verne鈥檚 words with me on every expedition I鈥檝e made.鈥 She quotes Verne: 鈥淭he chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.鈥
New Recommendation: Phoenix loves Verne鈥檚 story for its combination of high-stakes adventure, travel, and far-off places. If you鈥檙e looking for a more contemporary journey that touches on all those themes, try Hernan Diaz鈥檚 new novel, . It follows Swede Hakan S枚derstr枚m as he tries to track down his missing brother, Linus, in the American frontier after the two ended up on different ships heading for the United States. It鈥檚 a western, sort of, but Diaz, who is also an academic, subverts the frontier narrative and makes the West a strange, alien land for Hakan to navigate.
Rachael Burks
Skier Rachael Burks cried the first time she finished Don DeLillo鈥檚 . She鈥檇 become so attached to the characters that she didn鈥檛 want to let them go. DeLillo鈥檚 novel is hard to encapsulate; it weaves together multiple storylines and touches on pop culture, politics, and personal history. As he threads through those stories over the course of 50 years, DeLillo creates a portrait of living in nuclear America. 鈥淚t has complex storylines with deep character development, and it鈥檚 so deeply American,鈥 Burks says. 鈥淚 mean, it revolves around a baseball.鈥
New Recommendation: In the same way that Underworld joins disparate storylines to show a broader narrative, Tommy Orange鈥檚 book听听pieces together history and culture to tell a different kind of American story. Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma who grew up in Oakland, writes about 12 different people who show up at the big Oakland Powwow. By showing how their experiences intersect, Orange drills into what it means to be an urban Native American and how people get trapped by history and assumptions.
Steve House
House, the climber whose book has changed the way lots of mountaineers push themselves, says he likes the speed at which Aldo Leopold鈥檚 mind works: patient and deeply observational. , Leopold鈥檚 deep dive into the landscape around him and the ways people interact with the land is one of the first environmental essay books House ever read and one of the few that he returns to. Leopold鈥檚 essays range from a seasonal study of wildlife on his property to an interrogation of what and who wilderness is for, clearly articulating the importance of an interconnected ecosystem and providing a call to action for conservation that still holds up years later.
New Recommendation: Leopold probed his own connections to place to show the values of nature. In his new collection of essays, , Nick Neely does the same. Neely grew up in coastal California, and听like Leopold听he treads the lines of personal narrative and natural history to tell stories about the coastlands of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. In another Leopold-like vein, Neely is a graceful, subtle writer with a sharp eye for the easily missed details of his surroundings.