Top ten stories of people in real-life peril

Emma Barrett is a Chartered Psychologist based in the United Kingdom. She is Honorary Researcher in Psychology at Lancaster University and is co-author, with Paul Martin, of Extreme: Why Some People Thrive at the Limits.

At the Guardian, Barrett and Martin tagged ten of their favorite books about and by people in extremes, including:

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (Vintage, 1997)

Simpson’s account of how he dragged himself to safety after being left for dead in a crevasse in the Andes has justly become a mountaineering classic. A powerful story of survival in extremes, conveying with brutal honesty the physical and psychological horrors of three days spent in appalling pain, dehydrated and hungry, and haunted by the thought that he would find base camp abandoned. It’s a harrowing tale, although Simpson noted that “for me this book still falls short of articulating just how dreadful were some of those lonely days. I simply could not find the words to express the utter desolation of the experience.”

Read about another entry on the list.

Touching the Void is one of Andy Cave's top ten books on Alpinism.

The Page 99 Test: Extreme: Why Some People Thrive at the Limits.

--Marshal Zeringue