Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Nando Parrado: the Taste of Human Flesh

Juliane Koepcke: Cauldron of Hell

John McDouall Stuart: the Maddest Explorer Ever?

Captain James Riley: Slaves in the Sahara

Steven Callahan: ‘My Body is Rotting Before My Eyes’

Thor Heyerdahl: the Kon-Tiki Expedition

Jan Baalsrud: the Greatest Escape

Louis Zamperini: Wrecked, Survived, Tortured, Revived

Alistair Urquhart: They Don’t Make ’Em Like This No More

Nancy Wake: the White Mouse Spy

Tommy Macpherson: the Man Who Took on 23,000 Nazis

Bill Ash: the Cooler King

Edward Whymper: a Disastrous Success

George Mallory: ‘Because It’s There’

Toni Kurz: the Murder Face

Pete Schoening: the Belay

Joe Simpson: Cut the Rope or Die

Chris Moon: Kidnapped, Blown Up … and Still Going

Marcus Luttrell: Hell Week

Aron Ralston: Self-Surgery Survival

Sir John Franklin: Death in the Arctic

Captain Scott: ‘Great God, This is an Awful Place’

Roald Amundsen: the Greatest Antarctic Explorer Ever

Douglas Mawson: White Hell

Ernest Shackleton: ‘the Most Pigheaded, Obstinate Boy I Ever Came Across’

Further Reading

Picture Acknowledgements

Index

About the Author

Also by Bear Grylls

Copyright