100 books like Into a Desert Place

By Graham Mackintosh,

Here are 100 books that Into a Desert Place fans have personally recommended if you like Into a Desert Place. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Stan Ulanski Author Of The California Current: A Pacific Ecosystem and Its Fliers, Divers, and Swimmers

From my list on dive into the ocean realm.

Why am I passionate about this?

Upon seeing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time as a child, I was awestruck by its immensity and couldn't even begin to comprehend how deep it was and what creatures lurked beneath its waves. This initial encounter would spark a lifelong interest in the marine environment, leading to formal training and education in oceanography and a professorship where I could share my love and enthusiasm for the oceans. Though now retired, my fascination has not diminished, continuing to research and write about the oceans and, whenever possible, experience the smell, the roar, and the movement of the ocean.

Stan's book list on dive into the ocean realm

Stan Ulanski Why did Stan love this book?

The book captures the excitement of Steinbeck's research expedition with biologist Ed Ricketts to the remote Sea of Cortez, with all its hardships, failures, and thrills of discovery.

I felt that I was onboard the vessel, feeling the rhythmic rocking of the boat, the daily oppressive heat and humidity, and the mind-numbing routine of taking myriad samples and observations. I found myself nodding along with Steinbeck's assessment that though marine exploration can be tedious, the rewards lift up the human spirit.

By John Steinbeck,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Log from the Sea of Cortez as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1940 Steinbeck sailed in a sardine boat with his great friend the marine biologist, Ed Ricketts, to collect marine invertebrates from the beaches of the Gulf of California. The expedition was described by the two men in SEA OF CORTEZ, published in 1941. The day-to-day story of the trip is told here in the Log, which combines science, philosophy and high-spirited adventure.


Book cover of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico

Jennifer Silva Redmond Author Of Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat

From my list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on Southern California beaches—Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach, Ocean Beach, La Jolla—but first experienced Baja as an adult. It was like a different world. Returning repeatedly over the next decade, I came to know the stunning shorelines and quiet bays of the peninsula’s midriff as intimately as my home state’s beaches. Swimming and diving Baja’s clear blue waters and hiking its dusty trails and palm-studded mountains, I have admired the many moods of this unique desert peninsula. A writer and editor, I have read extensively from the vast selection of books about Baja, both new and classic works.

Jennifer's book list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there

Jennifer Silva Redmond Why did Jennifer love this book?

I love how this author's modern-day experiences blend with her well-researched history, and I was intrigued by how she brought in a big serving of cultural heritage, giving readers tasty anecdotes about the eclectic people who shaped Baja and who still do—from a daring pilot to an artist far from home.

Like me, C.M. Mayo is a child of blended race whose desire to comprehend her Mexican heritage and experience her Mexican-ness seems to drive a large part of her travels.

I could relate to her instant love of the peninsula but was thrilled by her journalistic delving into the modern dichotomies of this “other Mexico” like the celebrating of the Day of the Dead beside the cheap commercialization of Halloween.

By C. M. Mayo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Miraculous Air as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Baja California is a place where nothing is as it seems. Cleaved from the Mexican mainland by the Sea of Cortes and separated from the rest of North America by a multitude of cultural and economic differences, the nearly one-thousand-mile-long peninsula is scarred by imperial transgressions yet blessed with extraordinary natural beauty. "The very air here is miraculous," wrote John Steinbeck, "and outlines of reality change with the moment."

It was desire that first took C.M. Mayo to Baja California, but only a longing for understanding could produce this exquisite portrait of "the Other Mexico." As mindful of the peninsula's…


Book cover of Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California

Jennifer Silva Redmond Author Of Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat

From my list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on Southern California beaches—Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach, Ocean Beach, La Jolla—but first experienced Baja as an adult. It was like a different world. Returning repeatedly over the next decade, I came to know the stunning shorelines and quiet bays of the peninsula’s midriff as intimately as my home state’s beaches. Swimming and diving Baja’s clear blue waters and hiking its dusty trails and palm-studded mountains, I have admired the many moods of this unique desert peninsula. A writer and editor, I have read extensively from the vast selection of books about Baja, both new and classic works.

Jennifer's book list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there

Jennifer Silva Redmond Why did Jennifer love this book?

My favorite memoirs blend personal observations with some history and natural history and this book delivers on all those fronts.

I enjoyed how Berger’s essays ranged from the microcosm to the macrocosm, focusing on subjects as diverse as the dogs who lived on the rooftops of La Paz neighborhood, to the joy and the business of chasing eclipses.

An amateur natural historian who previously wrote about the environmental effects of the Glen Canyon Dam in “There Was a River” Berger obviously loves Baja, but more importantly, he is fascinated by the unique desert peninsula. His book drew me in from its first page and fascinated me in repeated readings.

By Bruce Berger,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Almost an Island as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


Long frequented by pirates and haunted by pariahs, Baja California has become a favorite destination for whale watchers, hikers, and scuba divers. For Bruce Berger it has been more. In Almost an Island, he takes readers beyond the Baja of guidebooks and offers a wildly entertaining look at the real Baja California.

Eight hundred miles long, Baja California is the remotest region of the Sonoran desert, a land of volcanic cliffs, glistening beaches, fantastical boojum trees, and some of the greatest primitive murals in the Western Hemisphere. In Almost an Island, Berger recounts tales from his three decades in this…


Book cover of Cave Paintings of Baja California: Discovering the Great Murals of an Unknown People

Jennifer Silva Redmond Author Of Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat

From my list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on Southern California beaches—Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach, Ocean Beach, La Jolla—but first experienced Baja as an adult. It was like a different world. Returning repeatedly over the next decade, I came to know the stunning shorelines and quiet bays of the peninsula’s midriff as intimately as my home state’s beaches. Swimming and diving Baja’s clear blue waters and hiking its dusty trails and palm-studded mountains, I have admired the many moods of this unique desert peninsula. A writer and editor, I have read extensively from the vast selection of books about Baja, both new and classic works.

Jennifer's book list on nonfiction Baja that can transport you there

Jennifer Silva Redmond Why did Jennifer love this book?

You cannot judge a book by its cover, especially this one.

I know it looks like a coffee table book—and it is a gorgeous book full of incredible photos of the cave painting sites and much more, all by the author—but it is so much more than that.

First off, it is an adventure story, and it quickly becomes a story of exploration and discovery. I found myself as gripped by it as by the plot of any mystery tale, and I am so grateful that the author taught me about, and inspired me to learn even more about, Baja’s amazing and mysterious cave paintings.

This book was truly an inspiration to me.

By Harry Crosby, Joanne H Crosby (illustrator), Lowell Lindsay (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cave Paintings of Baja California as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A full-color account of the great murals of a forgotten people. Depicts the author's discovery and documentation of a world-class archaeological region in remote central Baja.


Book cover of A Walk Across America

Margaret Meps Schulte Author Of Strangers Have the Best Candy

From my list on getting you talking to strangers.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was a youngster, my parents took me on 6-week journeys across the United States by car. We'd stop in a small town each night, and I would explore on foot and meet other kids at the swimming pool or ice cream shop. That slow mode of travel has become my default, and I've spent years exploring back roads, small towns, and bywaters by car, bicycle, and sailboat. I write about the strangers I've found and the "candy" I've gotten from them: strangers have lessons for all of us and are not as dangerous as we've been told.

Margaret's book list on getting you talking to strangers

Margaret Meps Schulte Why did Margaret love this book?

Peter set out during the Vietnam War era to walk all the way across the United States with only a camera, a backpack, and a dog. His books, which I read as a teenager, brought fascinating strangers into my world and taught me how much those strangers can change our lives. Thanks to Peter's writing, I've always felt safe talking to strangers, and I seek them out to find out who they are and what their lives are like. 

By Peter Jenkins,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Walk Across America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Twenty-five years ago, a disillusioned young man set out on a walk across America. This is the book he wrote about that journey -- a classic account of the reawakening of his faith in himself and his country.

"I started out searching for myself and my country," Peter Jenkins writes, "and found both." In this timeless classic, Jenkins describes how disillusionment with society in the 1970s drove him out onto the road on a walk across America. His experiences remain as sharp and telling today as they were twenty-five years ago -- from the timeless secrets of life, learned from…


Book cover of Wanderers: A History of Women Walking

Kathy Elkind Author Of To Walk It Is To See It: 1 Couple, 98 Days, 1400 Miles on Europe's GR5

From my list on strong women walking.

Why am I passionate about this?

I had always wanted a grand adventure and I’ve always loved reading about epic journeys. When I was a teen, I read an article in National Geographic about walking the Appalachian Trail and thought, I need to do that. I grew up in an outdoorsy family and married a man who loved the outdoors even more. But we never got to an adventure until we were empty nesters. In our late fifties we decided to walk 1400 miles from the cold North Sea to the warm Mediterranean on the legendary long-distance trail the GR5. After finishing our epic journey, I needed to share my love of European walking with others.

Kathy's book list on strong women walking

Kathy Elkind Why did Kathy love this book?

Wanderers is not a memoir. Andrews, who is a professor of literature in the UK, presents ten chapters on ten famous women writers who also walked.

I found it interesting to learn how some of the women left town before dawn to walk so that they would not be seen. Society at that time felt it was not safe for a woman to walk by herself. I was amazed at some of the distances that they walked; for example, in the early 1800s Ellen Weeton walked 35 miles in a day. 

I found the interconnection of walking to help writing and writing about walking fascinating. I will return to read this again and again. 

By Kerri Andrews,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Wanderers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now in B-format paperback, this book describes ten women over the past three hundred years who have found walking essential to their sense of themselves, as people and as writers.
Wanderers traces their footsteps, from eighteenth-century parson's daughter Elizabeth Carter - who desired nothing more than to be taken for a vagabond in the wilds of southern England - to modern walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed. For each, walking was integral, whether it was rambling for miles across the Highlands, like Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, or pacing novels into being, as Virginia Woolf did around Bloomsbury.
Offering a…


Book cover of Walking Home: A Poet's Journey

James Ellson Author Of The Trail

From my list on to take on a walking holiday.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a keen walker/hiker/backpacker since I was five when my parents named a local footpath James’s Path. Almost fifty years later, I have walked all over the UK and further afield in the Pyrenees and the Alps, Nepal, and the Antipodes. Walking for me is both a means to an end—to reach mountaineering routes and as exercise—and as an end in itself. Days spent walking can be reflective, social, demanding, and memorable. I always take a book, even if it's a day walk, and two or three if it’s a multiday trip. I hope you’re as energized and stimulated by my suggestions as I’ve been.

James' book list on to take on a walking holiday

James Ellson Why did James love this book?

Whatever my current passion, from mountaineering to grafting apple trees to hiking, I like to immerse myself in the literature. Simon Armitage’s account of The Pennine Way in the Peak District (UK) is one of my favorite walking memoirs and is informative, eclectic, and funny. In addition, the route starts only a few miles from my house.

I’m walking it with my wife, in sections, so we might meet you on the way! If you’re not a walker, Walking Home may inspire you to start—even to set out on a long-distance footpath.

By Simon Armitage,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Walking Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The wandering poet has always been a feature of our cultural imagination. Odysseus journeys home, his famous flair for storytelling seducing friend and foe. The Romantic poets tramped all over the Lake District searching for inspiration. Now Simon Armitage, with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation, as well as a wry humor all his own, has taken on Britain's version of our Appalachian Trail: the Pennine Way. Walking "the backbone of England" by day (accompanied by friends, family, strangers, dogs, the unpredictable English weather, and a backpack full of Mars Bars), each evening he gives a poetry reading in a different…


Book cover of Tequila Oil

Jonny Bealby Author Of Running with the Moon: A Boy's Own Adventure: Riding a Motorbike Through Africa

From my list on escapism and travel.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having driven a motorbike around Africa, walked through parts of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and ridden a horse along the Silk Road, which culminated in three travel books, a Discovery Channel film, and Wild Frontiers the award-winning travel company I set up, I think it’s fair to say I know a thing or two about travel. With over 100 countries under my belt, discovering new places and meeting new people has always been my passion. The books I have chosen here are ones that I think best communicate both a physical and a mental journey, that draw you into a story with a beginning a middle, and an end, and leave you knowing more about both a region of the world and human nature.

Jonny's book list on escapism and travel

Jonny Bealby Why did Jonny love this book?

Recently divorced and looking for meaning in middle age, this endearing traveller retraces the journey he made as a wide-eyed 19-year-old that saw him drive a car from California into the heart of Mexico in the hope of making a quick buck. The naivety and optimism of adolescence, beautifully juxtaposed against the reality of age, this is a poignant tale of lost youth and unfulfilled dreams that ultimately leads the author to a peaceful conclusion.

By Hugh Thomson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tequila Oil as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Try this tequila oil, Hugito. Just as the alcohol hits your stomach, the chilli will as well and blow it back into your brain. It will take your head off.' Explorer Hugh Thomson takes on Mexico.

It's 1979, Hugh Thomson is eighteen, far from home, with time to kill - and on his way to Mexico. When a stranger tells him there's money to be made by driving a car over the US border to sell on the black market in Central America, Hugh decides to give it a go.

Throwing himself on the mercy of Mexicans he meets or…


Book cover of Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence

Emma Darwin Author Of This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin: a writer’s journey through my family

From my list on failing to write a book.

Why am I passionate about this?

Alongside writing, I’ve been running workshops, teaching and mentoring writers for nearly twenty years, helping people get unstuck and keep going. So I spend most of my working life thinking about creativity and writing—then suddenly I, too, couldn’t write the book I needed to write. Every book in this list is about not-writing for different reasons, in different circumstances, but between them they tell us so much about how we write, why we write, how we get writing to happen—and what’s happening when we can’t. These very different stories resonate with each other, and I hope some of them resonate with you.

Emma's book list on failing to write a book

Emma Darwin Why did Emma love this book?

First, because it’s incredibly funny. Geoff Dyer set out—he says—to write a sober, serious study of D. H. Lawrence, but life, travel arrangements, random people and his own inertia kept getting in the way. The story of his odyssey doesn’t just evoke all the things about writing that we’ve always suspected (that it’s hard; that it’s easy; that we often wonder why on earth we do it; that we never question that we want to do it). It also, by stealth, evokes and explains an amazing amount about Lawrence, and why he’s a writer that so many people love—or hate—so passionately. 

By Geoff Dyer,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Out of Sheer Rage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Recounts the author's experiences visiting the places D.H. Lawrence lived while actively not working on a book about Lawrence and not writing his own novel.


Book cover of God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

Brian Klingborg Author Of Thief of Souls

From my list on international crime both fiction and nonfiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a small town in the days before the internet and cable television, so books were my escape, and through them, I traveled to faraway places and learned about different customs and cultures. Later, I studied Chinese cultural anthropology and lived and worked in Asia for many years. Now, I write a series about a Chinese police inspector in the brutally cold far north province of Heilongjiang and use mystery stories to unpack some of the more fascinating and essential aspects of Chinese society, politics, and religion.

Brian's book list on international crime both fiction and nonfiction

Brian Klingborg Why did Brian love this book?

This is a non-fiction travelogue deep into the heart of Mexican narco country.

Journalist Richard Grant’s borderline insane self-inflicted quest was to travel through the Sierra Madre mountains, some of the world’s toughest and most dangerous terrain, home to bandits, drug smugglers, opium cultivators, cowboys, folk healers, and hermits.

His adventures are fascinating, entertaining, and hair-raising. One episode in particular, when he was hunted through the night by a couple of Mexicans who seemed bent on killing him for sport, sent chills down my spine.

I recommend this for anyone interested in the outlaws, outcasts, shamans, and the realities of narco-economics.

By Richard Grant,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked God's Middle Finger as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the acclaimed author of Dispatches From Pluto and Deepest South of All, a harrowing travelogue into Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre mountains.

Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, Mormons, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, cowboys, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source…


Book cover of The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Book cover of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico
Book cover of Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California

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5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in walking, deserts, and Mexico?

Walking 21 books
Deserts 36 books
Mexico 232 books