Recommended Reading

As a young boy in Sweden at the beginning of the twentieth century, bookworm Sven Ormson was obsessed with polar adventure, but decades of lethargy and dead-end jobs have led to a man who is, at best, stuck. Spurred by his sister Olga, he accepts a two-year contract working as a miner on Spitsbergen, an island halfway between Norway and the North Pole. Early on, a mine shaft collapses, killing nine and grievously wounding Sven. His face is crushed, one eye gone, but the accident is one of the externalities that propel him forward when he can’t do so himself. Wry, sardonic, and funny, Sven narrates his path from victim to legendary Arctic fur trapper, accompanied by a handful of friends (human and canine) who see his worth even when he doesn’t. Based on a real hunter about whom little is known, fictionalized Sven is a cracking good observer of northern scapes, solitude, and the healing power of the human heart.

Smug Homo sapiens have long looked down on Neanderthals, like city folk sneering at country cousins. Snort. You couldn’t even not go extinct. But these hominins have always gotten a bad rap, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s affectionate synthesis of a revolution in scientific understanding shows just how bad. Rather than dimwitted brutes, Neanderthals were human beings whose brains were as big or bigger than ours, who ranged from the British Isles to the Chinese border to the deserts of Arabia, who created sophisticated stone tools and developed complex adhesives such as birch tar, and who lived successfully in an ever-changing climate for more than three hundred thousand years. Oh, and interbred with Sapiens to the extent that two to three percent of our genes come from them. These people were smart, adaptable, and clever, and while there are plenty of lessons to be found in their experience (and extinction), the Kindred message that lingers longest is respect. Way overdue respect.

UFOs and weirdos get the headlines, but there’s more to Ken Layne than desert gothic. The Joshua Tree, California-based writer, radio host, and podcaster loves arid lands—their big magenta sunsets, their scrappy and resilient residents—and makes no bones that he hopes you fall in love with them, too. This three-hundred-page collection of stories, snippets, legends, and lore, gleaned from his Desert Oracle periodical and a few other outlets, is best shared around a campfire. There are cowboys and country music heroes and the birth of Area 51 and electric cars and, admittedly, lots of UFOs. But no matter how far afield Layne ranges, he always seems to be getting at the question, what is it about this place? The answer, his stories suggest, will only come if we look at the desert in the same way we’re taught to gaze at individual stars. View it askew, squint a little, and let your imagination fill in the rest.

Do North Americans still dream of alpine vacations? They will after perusing Gestalten’s lushly illustrated ode to fifty hikes across the Alps. Ranging from a few hours to more than a week, from casual rambles to dizzying via ferratas, the selected routes take you past Europe’s mountainous greatest hits. Zermatt, ja. Mont Blanc, oui. The Dolomites, bellissima! But, too, you’ll find treasures likely unknown to those on the west side of the pond, such as the Traverse of the Vercours. Stretching fifty-one miles over three to five days, Vercours offers easy camping (often rare in the Alps), lower elevations (all below eight thousand feet), and limestone peaks galore (the reason it’s called the French Dolomites). If Gestalten is trying to inspire, job well done.