Here are 86 books that Living High fans have personally recommended if you like
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When I was in middle school, I’d spend much of my time in class daydreaming. Imagining myself in, say, a debate with someone I disagree with and going through a litany of scenarios where I’d try to convince that other person to change their mind. It’s a lot of fun. (My teachers would likely disagree.) When I grew older, I did more of that on my daily walks, and then about 11 years ago, I decided to start writing about creative ways to teach someone something they’re vehemently opposed to or just ambivalent about. I’ve published four books since then on this topic.
I read this book during my last year in college. I finished it in one day and figured there was no better personification for teaching in an unconventional way than the charismatic Richard Feynman.
I loved the story in one chapter about people attending his talks, being totally mesmerized, and then not being able to say what the lesson was about afterward. How we say something really is more important than what we say.
Richard P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. In this lively work that "can shatter the stereotype of the stuffy scientist" (Detroit Free Press), Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets-and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his stories, Feynman's life shines through in all its eccentric glory-a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.
Included for this edition is a new introduction by Bill Gates.
For the last decade, I’ve spent the majority of each year traveling. I’ve been to 60 countries across 6 continents and every US state. My love of travel was inspired and encouraged by my parents from a very early age. I’ve also been inspired by a wide variety of other sources, like movies, TV, photography, and, of course, books. Often, I’ll plan an adventure around a cool location I saw or read about and then just go. I’ll just show up and see what happens. All it takes is that little initial nudge, like what I found in these books.
This is the quintessential American road trip travelogue by one of America’s greatest novelists. Written towards the end of his life, after driving literally around the country with his faithful poodle Charley, it’s a remarkable, if sometimes probably fictionalized or at least embellished, snapshot of the country in late 1960.
Some language and aspects throughout are definitely “of its time,” but so many insights and perspectives could have easily been written about the modern US. It’s a testament to the power and wonder of a good road trip that is sometimes funny, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes heart-wrenching, but always captivating.
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light-these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the…
I didn’t realize for a long time that I was drawn to reading and writing quiet, character-driven stories about found families–because I didn’t know that was a thing. But here we are. As an introvert, I love learning about people and exploring their relationships with one another, and I have devoted my writing and reading life to this endeavor (even before, again, I knew this was a thing). As a child, I spent my time in libraries, falling in love with these characters. Now, as an author and professor of writing, I believe these novels are also all incredible textbooks of character creation and storytelling.
I first read this as a teen and fell hard for the characters that populate this story and Novalee’s life. Pregnant and abandoned, Novalee’s life is the definition of loss at the start of the story—but by the end, her life is filled with such love and richness that it’s easy to forget how she started.
She continues to experience loss as the story continues, but the strength her found family gives her demonstrates how the right people can help us grow. These characters are quirky and loving, and I can’t help but wish they were all real every time I read it.
A 17-year-old pregnant girl heading for Califonia with her boyfriend finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change. But she's about to be helped by a group of down-to-earth, deeply caring people, including a bible-thumping nun and an eccentric librarian.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
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.
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.
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…
As a former U.S. Navy Aviation Rescue Swimmer and sponsored mountaineer, I’ve always been wired a bit differently. Whether it’s jumping from a helicopter to save a drowning person or topping out on the highest peak in the world, I’m always drawn to adventure and, specifically, stories of survival. Having operated in highly traumatic environments, I’ve gleaned a lot of wisdom through the years, which I’m now able to retell through my writing. I hope you enjoy the books on this list and they have a profound impact on you the same way they did on me!
Having climbed North America’s highest peak 3 times, Denali’s Howl describes a horrific situation on a mountain I’m all too familiar with.
The weather patterns, distance, and size of Denali make it an unforgiving peak to climb. I couldn’t put this book down as Hall recounted the dire scenario the climbers went through resulting in tragedy.
In the summer of 1967, twelve young men ascended Alaska's Mount McKinley-known to the locals as Denali. Engulfed by a once-in-alifetime blizzard, only five made it back down.
Andy Hall, a journalist and son of the park superintendent at the time, was living in the park when the tragedy occurred and spent years tracking down rescuers, survivors, lost documents, and recordings of radio communications. In Denali's Howl, Hall reveals the full story of the expedition in a powerful retelling that will mesmerize the climbing community as well as anyone interested in mega-storms and man's sometimes deadly drive to challenge the…
I grew up on the Delaware River and took my first canoe trip around 12. Later, in my teens, I worked for a canoe outfitter. During college, I took several longer trips with friends. When a father, I would bring my kids and family along, often with a dog. Later, I would paddle the whole stretch of it, 200 miles from the headwaters to my boyhood home, which I wrote about in my book. To write it, I reread many of these books, including Powell and Graves, who also paddled with his dog. Mine, Sully, joined me on my 9-day trip.
McPhee refers to the “gin-clear” water of Alaskan rivers, and his prose is equally lucid. It is also dense with facts, each sentence packed like a canoe or loaded raft. Serialized in the New Yorker in the 1970s, the “The Encircled River” section describes his canoe journey down a 60-mile segment of Salmon River, the most northern river above the Arctic Circle.
With four others who worked for the U.S. government, they studied the river as a national wild river Congress would be voting on to become part of the Kobuk Valley National Monument. The legislation passed under Jimmy Carter on December 2, 1980. Pair with his Survival of a Birch Bark Canoe.
Coming into the Country is an unforgettable account of Alaska and Alaskans. It is a rich tapestry of vivid characters, observed landscapes, and descriptive narrative, in three principal segments that deal, respectively, with a total wilderness, with urban Alaska, and with life in the remoteness of the bush.
Readers of McPhee's earlier books will not be unprepared for his surprising shifts of scene and ordering of events, brilliantly combined into an organic whole. In the course of this volume we are made acquainted with the lore and techniques of placer mining, the habits and legends of the barren-ground grizzly, the…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
I wanted to visit Alaska since high school. It took me a couple of decades to make good on the urge, but I have made numerous trips. Alaska has everything I have always loved about Colorado, but in superlatives. From a historical standpoint, Alaska means mountains, mining, and railroads, exactly what I have written about in the lower forty-eight. Outdoors, there has never been any place that makes me happier than climbing mountains or rafting rivers. Spend two weeks in the Brooks Range with just one buddy without seeing another human and one comes to understand the land—and appreciate stories from people who do, too!
Before “Mardie” Murie became the guardian of America’s conservation conscience, she was a young bride traveling halfway across Alaska to marry a man she barely knew. Together Olaus and Mardie Murie lived a wilderness life always awed by the landscape and its wild inhabitants. Did things “change with children?” she was once asked. “No," Mardie smiled sweetly, “we just took them with us.”
This is the Muries’ story from those early years through their travels in the Arctic National Wildlife Area (ANWR) and support for the Wilderness Act. I first read this book long before I battled mosquitoes on the Koyukuk River, as they had on their honeymoon, and hiked up Double Mountain above their 1956 camp on the Sheenjak. Hosting Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas that summer, their joint efforts led to the creation of ANWR.
A Northern classic and beloved favorite, Two in the Far North chronicles the incredible story of Margaret "Mardy" Murie, called the Grandmother of the Conservation Movement, and how she became one of the first women to embrace and champion wilderness conservation in America.
At the age of nine, Margaret Murie moved from Seattle to Fairbanks, not realizing the trajectory life would take her from there. This moving testimonial to the preservation of the Arctic wilderness comes straight from her heart as she writes about growing up in Fairbanks, becoming the first woman graduate…
I’m a huge fan of Alaska—a landscape of unforgiving weather patterns, inaccessible terrain, savage animals, and undeniable pristine beauty. I’m also a nature lover and spend as much time outdoors as possible, often hiking and marveling at spectacular vistas like those found in The Damnable Legacy. But I’m also an avid observer of the human race and am fascinated by all sorts of behaviors: why we pursue our passions, how we love and grieve, and whether we can really change who we are at the core.
The initial hook inStill Points North was, for me, the opening and its description of the 4-seat plane that the author often flew in with her father. I flew in one when I went to Denali for field research for my novel, and it became not just one of those memories I’ll never forget but also experiential data for my book. I also appreciated how the author so eloquently describes the landscape, comparing and contrasting life in the wilderness with life on the East Coast. But what most impressed me was her revelation, which coincides with the experiences of my novel’s protagonist, that relationships can sometimes be more frightening and challenging than Alaska’s natural savagery.
Part adventure story, part love story, part homecoming, Still Points North is a page-turning memoir that explores the extremes of belonging and exile, and the difference between how to survive and knowing how to truly live.
Growing up in the wilds of Alaska, seven-year-old Leigh Newman spent her time landing silver salmon, hiking glaciers, and flying in a single-prop plane. But her life split in two when her parents unexpectedly divorced, requiring her to spend summers on the tundra with her “Great Alaskan” father and the school year in Baltimore with her more urbane mother.
I have loved animals my entire life. I know first-hand the calming influence the unconditional love of a dog can bring to a person. In contentious Teams meetings on the computer, I pet my dog to keep calm. If I am sad or anxious, I grab the squeaky toy, and we play tug-of-war. I volunteered at the Animal Welfare Association, a no-kill New Jersey Animal Shelter. Through my work, I gained an understanding of how to assess the non-verbal cues of a dog. I’ve learned that it is essential to understand an animal’s body language more so than the standards and behaviors associated with breeds of dogs.
Kate Shugak, a park service ranger in Alaska, solves crimes with the aid of her canine companion, Mutt. Having a part wolf, part dog companion is integral to the story as Kate finds herself in precarious situations amongst the solitary and foreboding landscape. Kate will draw on her Native American heritage and culture to help her find an ancient artifact that has been missing for decades. Mutt leaps to Kate’s rescue as she uncovers the clues that villains are desperate to keep hidden.
In the newest entry in Dana Stabenow's "New York Times" bestselling "Kate Shugak" series, Kate and the rest of the Park rats are stunned by the death of Old Sam, Kate's eighty-seven-year-old uncle and foster father. In his will, he leaves almost everything to Kate, including a homestead deep in gold mining country that no one knew he had and a letter that reads simply, 'Find my father.' Easier said than done, since Sam's father is something of a mystery: an outsider who disappeared shortly after learning about Sam's existence, he took with him a priceless tribal artifact, a Russian…
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
I wanted to visit Alaska since high school. It took me a couple of decades to make good on the urge, but I have made numerous trips. Alaska has everything I have always loved about Colorado, but in superlatives. From a historical standpoint, Alaska means mountains, mining, and railroads, exactly what I have written about in the lower forty-eight. Outdoors, there has never been any place that makes me happier than climbing mountains or rafting rivers. Spend two weeks in the Brooks Range with just one buddy without seeing another human and one comes to understand the land—and appreciate stories from people who do, too!
Wilderness guru Bob Marshall and I share at least one thing in common: despite several attempts, neither of us succeeded in climbing Mount Doonerak, the sentinel rising above the North Fork of the Koyukuk. I have traveled that country around the Gates of the Arctic multiple times, but I remain in awe of Marshall’s pioneering trips during the 1930s when the area was generally unknown and unmapped.
Marshall’s account is part history, part adventure, and part human-interest story as he teamed up with interesting characters like Ernie Johnson after whom he named Ernie Creek. The two always managed to feast on Dall sheep. And it was Marshall who named the Gates of the Arctic. For those who can’t travel first-hand through what is still wilderness, Bob Marshall remains an enjoyable armchair guide.
Exploring the great wilderness of Alaska's Brooks Range was Robert Marshall's joy and delight during the decade between 1929 and 1939. Marshall traveled this spectacular country, from the Upper Koyukuk drainage to the Arctic Divide, making maps, recording scientific data, and exalting in the beauty of that incredibly pristine landscape. Although his early death at thirty-eight ended an exceptional life too early, he left journals and letters to describe his favorite place on earth. These were edited by his brother George Marshall and were compiled to create this classic of environmental literature, now in its third edition after nearly fifty…
