I'm looking for books that detail harrowing survival tales. I've read Endurance, about Shackleton's crew stranded in the Antarctic. I'm just now finishing The Indifferent Stars Above and it is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. What a truly heart-wrenching story.
I'm looking for stuff that makes you thankful for the comfortable life you get to live. Unforgiving, rugged, unfamiliar terrains. Bonus points if they take place in pre-modern times for that extra sense of hopelessness (not strictly necessary). True non-fiction only please!
by toad_goblin
20 Comments
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read
*In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex* [1820] by Nathaniel Philbrick.
*Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party* by George R. Stewart.
*The Raft: The Courageous Struggle of Three Naval Airmen Against the Sea* by Robert Trumbull.
*Bataan Death March: A Soldier’s Story* by James Bollich, CPL, 16th Bomb Squadron, 27th Bomb Group, U.S.A.A.F.
*Bataan Death March: A Survivor’s Account* by William E. Dyess, LTC, 21st Pursuit Squadron, 24th Pursuit Group, U.S.A.A.F.
*Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath* by Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman.
*Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the U.S.S. Franklin in World War II* by Joseph Springer.
*Hell from the Heavens: The Epic Story of the U.S.S. Laffey and World War II’s Greatest Kamikaze Attack* by John Wukovits.
*Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR’s Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors* by James D. Hornfischer.
*No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War* by 2LT Hiroo Onoda, IJA.
*Ray Parkin’s Wartime Trilogy: Out of the Smoke; Into the Smother; The Sword and the Blossom* by Ray Parkin[,]() Chief Petty Officer, H.M.A.S. *Perth*, Royal Australian Navy.
*First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers* by Loung Ung.
The Wager, since you like shipwreck stories.
Pretty much any WWII story.
First They Killed My Father, about the Khmer Rouge
Into Thin Air, a classic about a climb gone wrong on Mt Everest
Into Thin Air by Krakauer
Society of the Snow, Pablo Vierci
Touching the void
Lauren Hillanbrand Unbroken.
We Die Alone by David Howarth is almost literally unbelievable, it’s great
When I Fell From The Sky by Juliane Koepcke.
The Worst Journey in the World from a member of Scott’s South Pole Expedition.
Flashes in the night (about the sinking of the Estonia)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. A Booker Prize winner.
Survival in the Killing Fields – Haing Ngor
First the Killed my Father – Ung Loung
The Indifferent Stars Above
Ada Blackjack by Jennifer Niven, about an Inupiaq woman stranded on a remote island above the Arctic circle. The Ice Master by Jennifer Niven is also good, with strong connections to the events and themes of Endurance.
127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Books by Kent Nerburn:
Neither Wolf Nor Dog, The Wolf at Twilight, and the Girl who sang to the Buffalo.
The first one made me the most uncomfortable. The second hurt so deep i cried. The third…made me think.
Bury My Heart at Wounded knee.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It’s a first-person account of surviving Auschwitz.
“Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital” by Sheri Fink.
Those poor people.
Try the opposite of the ice stories–Sands of the Zahara. Harrowing! Also One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is surviving the Gulag. And River of Doubt is surviving the Amazon.