100 Best Nepal Books of All Time

As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future

Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth’s past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future.

Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,” from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record—which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish—and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth’s biggest whodunits.

Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.

What Would You Do with a Yellow Envelope?

After Kim and her husband decide to quit their jobs to travel around the world, they're given a yellow envelope containing a check and instructions to give the money away. The only three rules for the envelope: Don't overthink it; share your experiences; don't feel pressured to give it all away.

Through Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, and beyond, Kim and Brian face obstacles, including major challenges to their relationship. As she distributes the gift to people she encounters along the way she learns that money does not have a thing to do with the capacity to give, but that giving—of ourselves—is transformational.

Andrew Stevenson's insightful, deeply personal account of an extended trek through the Himalayas, of the people he meets, the breathtaking beauty of the landscape, and his own spiritual journey.

Many disenchanted Westerners have gone to the Himalayas in search of renewal, but few have written about the experience as perceptively or as intimately as Andrew Stevenson. A traveller all his life, Stevenson responds to people and places with an openness unique to the cultural nomad. His portraits of the people of the Annapurna, and of the fellow trekkers who intermittently shared his journey, are a delight, and his descriptions of the landscape, and the physical hardships of the trek, are enthralling. Like every travel book of quality, this is also the record of a spiritual journey, and Stevenson movingly records his impressions of the Buddhist teachings lived around him. A richly rewarding read on every level.

American Sniper meets Jaws in this gripping true account of the deadliest animal of all time, the Champawat Tiger—responsible for killing more than 400 humans in northern India and Nepal in the first decade of the twentieth century—and the legendary hunter who finally brought it down.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in the forested foothills of the Himalayas between India and Nepal, a large Bengal tiger began preying on humans. Between roughly 1900 and 1907, the fearsome beast locals called the Champawat Man-Eater claimed 436 lives. Successfully evading both hunters and soldiers from the Nepalese army and growing bolder with its kills, the tiger—commonly a nocturnal predator—prowled settlements and roadways even in broad daylight. Entire villages were virtually abandoned.

Desperate for help, authorities appealed to Jim Corbett, a then-unknown railroad employee of humble origins who had grown up hunting and tracking game through the hills of Kumaon. Like a police detective on the trail of a human killer, Corbett questioned villagers who had encountered the tiger and began tracking its movements in the dense, hilly woodlands—while the animal began to hunt Corbett in return. When the big cat attacked a teenager and dragged her away, he followed the blood trail deep into the forest—a harrowing, dramatic chase that would ultimately end the maneater’s long reign of terror, and turn the young Corbett into a living legend.

In this rip-roaring adventure and compelling natural history, Dane Huckelbridge recreates one of the great adventure stories of the twentieth century, bringing into focus a principled, disciplined soldier, hunter, and conservationist—who would later earn fame for his devotion to saving the Bengal tiger and its habitat—and the beautiful, terrifying animal he patiently pursued. Written with the thrilling immediacy of John Vaillant’s The Tiger, Susan Casey’s The Devil’s Teeth, and Nate Blakeslee’s American Wolf, No Beast So Fierce is an enthralling depiction of a classic battle between man and animal, human encroachment and wild nature that resonates today.