Bookshelf

Day by day, minute by minute, the days are getting shorter. There’s no reason to stop spending every available minute outside pursuing your favorite way to move through wild places. At the same time, building your daylight savings season reading list is an appropriate way to prepare for late sunrises and early sunsets.

Here's a list of natural science, personal adventures, curious tangents and deep thoughts. Enjoy.

The Plunge

Maverick Swimmers, an Unlikely Quest, and the Transformative Power of Cold Water

Chris Ballard

Blending adventure journalism with rigorous research, The Plunge traces humanity’s long relationship with cold water—from the ancient Greeks and Victorian sea bathers to polar plungers and modern laboratories studying stress, resilience, and mental health- a lifeline for those “drowning on dry land.” Reporting from the front lines of emerging science, Ballard explores how brief, voluntary cold exposure can sharpen focus, elevate mood, reduce inflammation, stunt cortisol, and retrain the body’s stress response, creating a rare state of being both calm and alert.

Unfolding through vivid scenes and unforgettable characters, The Plunge is a story of endurance, science, and human connection —an exploration of why, in a climate-controlled, screen-saturated world, so many people choose to seek out discomfort, and what becomes possible when we do hard things together.

In Defense of Sunlight

The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure

Rowan Jacobsen

A quiet revolution is transforming our understanding of sunlight’s effects on human health. For decades, a “zero-sun” policy has characterized our approach to sun protection, advising us to stay out of the sun whenever possible and apply sunscreen daily to any skin that might be exposed, rain or shine, summer or winter, indoors or out. But recent studies have proved that this policy is thoroughly mistaken and that this prolific misunderstanding is causing us to miss out on many of the health benefits of sun exposure.

Acclaimed journalist Rowan Jacobsen presents the growing case for the importance of modest sun exposure for our health and well-being. Supported by the most up-to-date studies on the effects of sunlight on human health, Jacobsen offers a much-needed, lucid assessment of not only what the sun can do for us, but how a lack of sun could actively harm us.

A call for a return to common sense in our relationship with our local star, In Defense of Sunlight offers its own seven words of advice: Get sun. Not too much. Go outside.

Lost in Curiosity

Field Notes from Scientists’ Adventures into the Unknown

Roberta Kwok

In Lost in Curiosity, award-winning journalist Roberta Kwok pulls back the curtain on what scientific discovery actually looks like… Not a Eureka moment, but a fraught, often chaotic pursuit of truth.

Through vivid reporting and moments of unexpected emotion, Kwok reveals the inner lives of researchers who care profoundly about understanding our world and saving what’s left of it. From enigmatic fossils and mind-bending physics to the puzzling behavior of wild animals, Lost in Curiosity is a journey through the questions that keep scientists up at night—and the sometimes strange, always illuminating paths they take to answer them.

Farther

Eight Months on America’s Triple Crown Trails

Heather Anderson

From the bestselling author of Thirst and Mud, Rocks, Blazes, this memoir chronicles Heather Anderson’s ambitious journey to thru-hike America’s Triple Crown--the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trails--in a single calendar year.

Between 2003 and 2017, Anderson hiked more than 20,000 miles, twice completing each of the nation’s three longest trails and setting speed records along the way. But records can be broken--so Anderson set out to accomplish something even more audacious: becoming the first woman to hike what’s known as a Calendar Year Triple Crown.

Farther covers Anderson’s gritty and challenging effort across nearly 8,000 miles of backcountry, navigating physical hardship and mental resilience. Juggling logistics and weather, as well as emotional upheaval in her personal relationships, Anderson examines themes of grief, identity, and perseverance with clarity and vulnerability. As months of feral solitude and struggle unfold, Anderson seeks meaning through motion — how walking forward can help us find our way back to ourselves.

You’ll Never Walk Alone

A Hiker’s Memoir of Adventure, Tragedy, and Defying the Odds

Jo Giese

Life can change on a dime. Jo Giese was a passionate hiker one day, and unable to walk the next.

A random accident at home and botched surgery resulted in a dead Achilles tendon and left her at a decisive moment—would she no longer enjoy the outdoors as before, or would she battle to find her footing? When you enjoy hiking as much as Giese, the solution is obvious. The way ahead, however, is less so.

With significant help from loved ones and medical staff, and relying on her own toughness and positive outlook, she beat the odds, relearned how to walk, and returned to the outdoors. Giese was called “a medical miracle” and realized that, indeed, we never walk alone. Giese’s story chronicles her joy and how she responded when that joy was taken from her. This memoir is sure to have readers sobbing and celebrating, unwilling to settle for anything less than their best lives.

You’ll Never Walk Alone will have uncertain hikers getting off the couch, seasoned hikers reaching for their poles, and everybody seeking to express their gratitude no matter what challenges life tosses at them.

The Genius of Trees

How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World

Harriet Rix

In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and unseen biochemistry across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful station, not as victims of our negligence but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative.

Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller, less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch. And discoveries are constantly coming to light: research has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we thought–trees, once thought to produce methane, actually consume it.