5 Best True Story Adventure Non-Fiction Books to Keep You Reading All Night: Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken and More
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 | Amazon Price: $11.05 List Price: $27.00 |
 | Amazon Price: $5.71 List Price: $15.00 |
 | Amazon Price: $1.84 List Price: $26.99 |
 | Amazon Price: $6.17 List Price: $14.95 |
 | Amazon Price: $6.09 List Price: $14.00 |
 | Amazon Price: $6.69 List Price: $13.99 |
Truth is more gripping than fiction
I love when I am so engrossed in a book that I lose track of time, when I look up and see it is past 2 A.M. and tomorrow is a work day but what the heck, I simply need to know what happens next and nevermind that I will be as good as a zombie the next day. That's how I read when I was a kid; I was transported to another place entirely and turned each page in breathless anticipation.
Far fewer books transport me these days. Perhaps my imagination has dulled with age, or real-world pressures are real enough that it takes something extraordinary to take me so far outside myself that time just dissolves.
This still happens, if far less than I'd like. And it happens most often with non-fiction books written by a journalist. Journalists are natural storytellers, after all, just as much as any novelist. And the fact that these sometimes incredible stories actually happened ratchets up their intensity right there.
If you feel well-rested and want to find a book that you will tear through in mere days, here's a list of five of my favorites, starting with the one I most recently read, and reminded me just how great it feels to need to turn a page and find out what happens next.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
| Louis Zamperini is an Olympic miler that most believe will be the first person in the world to run a 4-minute mile. Then WWII comes, and Louis joins the equivalent of the Air Force. On a search and rescue mission, his plane fails and he crashes into the Pacific. He and two other crewmembers survive almost without water or rations on an inflatable raft for a record 47 DAYS — despite the best efforts of ever-present sharks and strafing Japanese war planes — only to be captured by the Japanese. And all of that is just in the first 15% of the book. You won't believe what you read, and every word in this new book by the author of "Seabuscuit" is true, true, true. Amazon Price: $11.05 List Price: $27.00 |
Into Thin Air
| Call it great luck or superb misfortune, but by sheer chance, journalist Jon Krakauer found himself summiting Mt. Everest on a reporting assignment. His 1996 journey coincided with one of the worst storms and epic losses of life on Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary first reached its peak in 1953. Krakauer gives readers a front-row seat to the business, soul, physical challenge and blind determination at the heart of commercial mountain climbing expeditions, and how their confluence led inevitably, inexorably, to tragedy. Amazon Price: $5.71 List Price: $15.00 |
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
| Ernest Shackleton sailed the Endurance en route to the South Pole in 1914, determined to accomplish what he failed to do six years earlier. There, his ship became locked in the pack ice it was designed to plow through, and Shackleton and his crew became hopelessly stuck. They had to rely on themselves for survival, so he abandoned his ship (but not the heavy photographic equipment he'd brought to document the voyage) and the whole crew set off across Antarctica to find a way to South America — all in the finest extreme weather gear that 1914 had to offer. Amazon Price: $6.17 List Price: $14.95 |
Alive
| In 1972, a plane carrying members of the Uruguayan rugby team crashes high in the Andes, and help does not arrive. The survivors resort to cannibalism to stay alive, and this book captures the bonds of friendship, how hard-wired we are to survive and what it means to be human. Amazon Price: $6.69 List Price: $13.99 |
| The same story of the 1972 crash in the Andes, recounted by one of the survivors. Amazon Price: $6.09 List Price: $14.00 |
War
| Writer Sebastian Junger spent 14 during 2007 and 2008 months embedded with the 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan. He survived those bloody conflicts to write this book that captures the horror and adrenaline and grim humor and hazing and filth and terror and tedium of actual war, all the while guiding readers beyond the physical world he occupied and into the hearts and minds, the souls and psychology of the soldiers for whom war is their way life. Amazon Price: $1.84 List Price: $26.99 |
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Thanks, Docmo, and you are right: Sebastian Junger did also write A Perfect Storm. I confess, though, I only saw the movie of that one. Check out Unbroken; if it were a movie I'd say there was no way that could happen in real life. And I'd be wrong!
Docmo Level 5 Commenter 15 months ago
Great suggestions- I have read Alive and have got Endurance that I need to read. The others sound good too. Didn't Sebastian Junger also write a Storm book? voted up.