9 Books National Geographic Explorers Couldn’t Put Down This Year
It's a pretty safe bet that if a book was good enough to pull these leading scientists and storytellers away from their work, it's one you'll want to check out.
What does the paleontologist digging up the world’s biggest dinosaurs read during downtime? Which novel moved a marine scientist to tears? Bob Ballard’s top pick for this year? Or, perhaps, you might want to know the book that gave the photographer of the newest cat species a sense of purpose in life! National Geographic Explorers shared their favorite books that kept them company on their big adventures this year.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
My favorite books tend to look at humanity through unexpected lenses. As someone who photographs space science (with her feet firmly planted on Earth), I loved how this book made outer space simultaneously feel present, complicated, simple, and connected. With 16 sunrises a day, it's a book about looking back on ourselves.
—Mackenzie Calle, Photographer
The Truth about Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife by Lucy Cooke
I love how author Lucy Cooke revels in the most peculiar qualities about each animal: She enjoys the quirkiness rather than villainizing and moralizing them. And she also details the fascinating history of what people have thought about these creatures through time. It reminds me that science is most exciting when our assumptions fall apart and we're left wondering why we ever thought what we thought to begin with.
—Sammy Ramsey, Entomologist
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia
I chose Ikigai because I connected with its idea of finding purpose in what we do. Not only a purpose in life, but also in small, everyday moments. Photography gives me that feeling. I love capturing real moments, meeting people, and telling their stories.
—Fernando Faciole, Photojournalist
The Supreme Gift: Love Is the Greatest Thing in the World by Paulo Coelho
The Supreme Gift is a deceptively simple book about something we often make complicated: love. I was struck by the idea that love is not simply an emotion, but something we practice through patience, kindness, humility, generosity, and sincerity.
—Nora Shawki, Egypt Archaeologist
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
How can we make our lives—and our deaths—more meaningful? I love this book because it explores that question in an unexpected way. As an Iranian American, third-culture kid with nostalgia and grief for my homeland, and my own intimate experiences with death, I found myself cringing, giggling, and tearing up with the understanding that we aren't alone in this outrageously painful and beautiful journey of life.
—Shireen Rahimi, Ocean Storyteller
Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue
This extraordinary novel recreates the surrender of Geronimo as a kind of wonder journey. The action unfolds in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, a complex place I know well as a reporter and traveler. The narrative skips (like that layered frontier itself) across boundaries of identity and myth, place and time, endings and beginnings.
—Paul Salopek, Journalist and Out of Eden Walk Founder
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
I reread Your Inner Fish this year. It’s an original and fascinating trip into the history of life written in our own bodies. I first read it over 15 years ago simply for pleasure, but this time I read it as a professor looking for different ways to bring paleontology to my students. It reminded me that books change as we do and what’s in our heads when we read a page is as important as what is written.
—Diego Pol, Paleontologist
American Nations by Colin Woodard
My favorite book I read this year was American Nations. As the world watches, America appears to be in a period of upheaval, which is difficult to understand. Rest assured it has always been in a period of upheaval due to the fact it really consists of eleven rival regional cultures that came to North America early in its history.
—Bob Ballard, Oceanographer
Inside the Neolithic Mind by David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce
Deep inside a Borneo cave, archaeologists found someone whose leg was surgically amputated 31,000 years ago, and they survived for years. Somehow, those people already knew how to human. David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce explore how minds wired like ours built myth, ritual, and meaning. Different era but same questions around what it means to be human.
—Albert Lin, Engineer
