Broken Compass Adventure Book Club

April 2013 Selection: The Maverick s surf point near Half Moon Bay, California, has long been one of the most dangerous places in the world to catch a ride. It is also the site of the Super Bowl of big-wave surfing: the Maverick s Surf Contest. Mark Kreidler takes readers inside the waves, inside the lives of the competitors, and introduces them to Jeff Clark, the man who first dared to ride Maverick s. Kreidler s riveting account of the 2010 season captures the jaw-dropping performance of South Africa s Chris Bertish as well as Clark s clashes with the contest s newly corporatized management. The Voodoo Wave is a thrilling account of a culture of high-risk, high-adrenaline athletes.

January 2013 Selection: Since childhood, Oliver Sacks has been fascinated by ferns: an ancient class of plants able to survive and adapt in many climates. Along with a delightful group of fellow fern aficionados--mathematicians, poets, artists, and assorted botanists and birders--he embarks on an exploration of Southern Mexico, a region that is also rich in human history and culture. He muses on the origins of chocolate and mescal, pre-Columbian culture and hallucinogens, the vibrant sights and sounds of the marketplace, and the peculiar passions of botanists. What other species would comb ancient Zapotec ruins on their hands and knees, searching for a new type of fern? Combining Sacks's enthusiasm for natural history and the richness of humanity with his sharp and observant eye for detail, Oaxaca Journal is a rare treat.

October 2012 Selection: The acclaimed and captivating true story of two restless society girls who left their affluent lives to "rough it" as teachers in the wilds of Colorado in 1916.

August 2012 Pick: On a windy spring morning in an ancient Cretan village, Rory MacLean fell to earth. His mother had died a few months earlier and a single obsession had risen from his grief: the notion to build a feather-light flying machine. And so, on the island where Daedalus and Icarus had made man's maiden flight, MacLean journeyed back to beginnings, back into the Greek myths, and--with the help of his Cretan neighbors and plenty of wine--built a plane and tried to fly.

Falling for Icarus is at once a meditation on love, a celebration of the passion for flight, and a hilarious, vivid portrait of a village. Its generous and exhilarating characters restore MacLean's faith in life. Through them, he tells a soaring, moving story about how a dream can transform sadness.

June 2012 Selection:On May 13, 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over "Shangri-La," a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea. Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton's bestselling novel Lost Horizon, this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals. But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers pulled through. Margaret Hastings, barefoot and burned, had no choice but to wear her dead best friend's shoes. John McCollom, grieving the death of his twin brother also aboard the plane, masked his grief with stoicism. Kenneth Decker, too, was severely burned and suffered a gaping head wound. Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to the hidden dangers of the jungle, the trio faced certain death unless they left the crash site. Caught between man-eating headhunters and enemy Japanese, the wounded passengers endured a harrowing hike down the mountainside--a journey into the unknown that would lead them straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man--or woman. Drawn from interviews, declassified U.S. Army documents, personal photos and mementos, a survivor's diary, a rescuer's journal, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this incredible true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the determined trio--dehydrated, sick, and in pain--traversed the dense jungle to find help; how a brave band of paratroopers risked their own lives to save the survivors; and how a cowboy colonel attempted a previously untested rescue mission to get them out.

April 2012 Pick: Part adventure story, part extreme sports, "Born to Run" is a riveting tale about one journalist's quest to discover the secrets of the world's greatest distance runners--a reclusive Indian tribe living deep in the Copper Canyon of northern Mexico.