The best books to take readers on a journey to unknown lands

David Grann’s captivating tale of an 18th-century shipwreck placed me squarely on the deck of the ship, the Wager, as it lunged and hurled through battering waves off the coast of Patagonia, then ran aground. Then things got really interesting. The Wager was not just fun as hell; it was also instructive.

It showed me how to forebode and forewarn without giving away too much plot and how to keep the reader engaged through mazes of meticulously gathered research. And it did it all aboard a lunging, listing vessel, then through 18 months among castaways on a rocky outpost, as they struggled to survive scurvy, typhus, starvation–and each other. 

This book was a frolicking gallop through 19th-century New Mexico and points west–places I know well. Based in Austin, me and my family often go skiing in Santa Fe and Taos, oblivious to the history lurking there. Reading Sides’ description of the frontier during that era transported me to those places from an entirely different perspective. And few people in American history have had more vivid adventures than Kit Carson, whether fending off warring parties of Comanches and Utes or leading military expeditions across the Sierras.

I loved how Hides writes with empathy about the final free days of Indians before they’re rounded into destitute reservations. Gave me an entirely new perspective on this gorgeous corner of the world. 

This book took me on a rollicking romp through antebellum Central Texas when the American frontier ended just west of Austin (where I currently reside). Gwynne expertly breathes life into the Comanche way, how they mastered side-saddle riding and rifle shooting and became such an overwhelming force on the high plains that even Mexico retreated its northern border to San Antonio.

It was captivating how Gwynne placed the reader within U.S. forts during Comanche raids or inside sprawling Comanche camps, bustling with stolen horses, abducted Westerners and with drying buffalo hides. At the book’s crux is the remarkable story of Cynthia Ann Parker, who is abducted at a young age and raised among Comanche, and her mixed-blood son, Quanah, who becomes the tribe’s greatest and last chief. 

The history of rum is, in so many ways, the history of Cuba. Bacardi shows this about as good as any book I’ve seen. I’m a first-generation Cuban-American (my parents left Cuba in the early ‘60s as teens and resettled to Miami).

So, it was particularly moving to follow the generational story of the Bacardis, the family from Santiago de Cuba who not only created what became the world’s best-known rum but whose patriarchs participated in or funded every coup, uprising, or political lurch in Cuba stretching back to the Spanish-American War.

I loved how Gjelten shepherds the reader from the horrors of the 19th-century war to the Cuban exodus following Fidel Castro’s ascent to power. It transported me to Cuba’s past and, more importantly, deepened my understanding of my own roots.  

I was trying hard not to rename an author in this exercise. But I admittedly failed. Sides does it again with The Wide, Wide Sea, an enthralling narrative on the final voyage of Capt. James Cook.

The author wastes no time putting me on the deck of the Resolute, Cook’s ship, for his third and final journey, as he and the crew sail to the Polynesian islands, Hawaii, up near the top of the earth and back to Hawaii–where he meets his demise. Even though you’re aware of the outcome, you can’t help but flip through pages with growing intensity, yearning to see how, exactly, this respected British admiral becomes the target of native hostility. Sides delivers.