Out There: The Wildest Stories from Outside Magazine

by Outside Magazine

Longtime readers have come to understand that Outside’s true gift is in chronicling misadventure. That’s the common thread among the stories found in Out There—those memorable tales that begin with the promise that, even if no one’s life is necessarily hanging in the balance, something may go horribly awry at any moment, and that documenting this misfortune will inevitably yield rich comedic material or a surprisingly poignant moment. Or sometimes both. Out There chronicles fringe athletes, fitness freaks, and others obsessed by ill-advised dreams. It takes us to far-flung places no sane person would want to go. What ties this collection together are the incredible voices of legendary Outside contributors such as David Quammen, Tim Cahill, Susan Orlean, Wells Tower, Christopher Solomon, Patrick Symmes, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Nick Paumgarten, and many others, who turn their subjects into literary gold and have helped to keep Outside in business for more than forty years.

Genres: Nonfiction, Adventure, Travel, Essays, Outdoors, Nature, Journalism

400 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2018

About the author

Outside is an American magazine focused on the outdoors. The first issue debuted in September 1977 with its mission statement declaring that the publication was "dedicated to covering the people, sports and activities, politics, art, literature, and (especially) hardware of the outdoors..."

Reviews

[Maria V. Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of articles that were published in Outside Magazine in the last 20 years. As an armchair adventurer, I really enjoyed these articles.

[Kathrin Passig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das Buch enthält zwei, drei interessante Reportagen und sehr viele, die sich alle gleich lesen, darunter eine große Menge Testosterontexte über Jagd, Muskeln und Sportwettbewerbe. Immerhin hab ich mehr darüber gelernt, welche Reportagen funktionieren und welche nicht. Die schlechte Nachricht: Reportagen, bei denen jemand losgeschickt wird, um einmal an irgendwas teilzunehmen, sind fast ausnahmslos langweilig. Insbesondere, wenn es sich bei diesem Irgendwas um ein touristisches Standardangebot handelt (Hundeschlittenfahren in Schweden; diese Reportage hätte ich selber schreiben können, ohne mein Bett zu verlassen), und wenn Angeberei im Spiel ist.

[Nicole Zeckner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve never been a reader of Outside Magazine. I’ve read some of their pieces when someone shared them. And I knew it's where authors like Jon Krakauer got their start. But when I see the magazine on the shelf it seems so focused on gear, which isn’t really an interest of mine. When I saw Out There: The Wildest Stories from Outside Magazine available for review on Net Galley I expected it’d be a way for me to get the stories, without all the other stuff.

What I didn’t expect, was the breadth of stories that would be covered. I figured it’d be all sportsy and outdoorsy stories. And while that certainly is there, it’s also full of more offbeat topics. There’s a story about nuclear bomb testing at Bikini Atoll, and the effects of that testing on the native people forced to leave. There are stories on the way climate change is affecting our natural, and manmade, world. There’s a story about a woman who rescues dogs and has a BERNESE MOUNTAIN CORGI. I had to find a picture of a Bernese Mountain Corgi. When I was searching for a picture, I found the original Outside article. And realized how much I was missing out by not having the accompanying pictures.

Out There is a great collection of stories, but the stories are not complete without the images that go along with them. Even just putting the pictures in the middle, with references to flip back to them would be acceptable. All the stories contained in the book are available online, and online they’re enhanced with the accompanying images.

The content contained within the pages of Out There is great, and it’s totally worth the read. It’s hard for me to recommend the book though, when you get more complete content for free.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Out There for review. Amazon links are affiliate links.

[Nikki Crouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fun read! This book is a collection of articles from Outside magazine so it’s easy to pick up and put down as each story is only 10-15 pages. I learned so many random facts that I never would have otherwise. There’s no real story arc or message to the book, but it provides an interesting look at all the different ways people relate to the outdoors and the beauty and connections that they find.

[Daniel Schulof · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent writing and lots of interesting topics.

[Shreya Thatai · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of essays I’ve ever read - I found it inspiring, moving, and a beautiful representation of human nature. Highly recommend it.

[Avi Paulson · Rating 4 out of 5]

makes me want to be outside

[Carianne Carleo-Evangelist]

If there was ever a book I was grateful for being an ebook, this is it. What a wonderfully oversized compilation of stories selected by Outsider Magazine. While I'm familiar with some of these authors, all of the stories were new to me, which was great.It was also a nice intro to new to me authors without needing to commit to a full book of their work. It was good to see some old favorites in here, especially Susan Orlean. Although I'm not an adventure traveler or particularly outdoorsy, there's truly something in here for everyone.

Among my favorites: Tim Cahill's "No Cannibal Jokes Please", Will Grant's "All the Jittery Horses", Stephanie Pearson's "The Undisputed King of Dogsled Tourism", Susan Orlean's "The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup" and Steven Rinella's "Brotherhood of the Very Expensive Pants".

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never seen Outside Magazine in my life, not qualifying as an extreme- or even active-lifestyle participant myself; but I loved reading this collection with its "effervescent mix of serious adventures and irreverent tone". I wasn't quite prepared for the sheer volume of poop mentions: grizzly scat, moose turds, human waste on rafts, luxury spa colonics, fecal samples, dog poo in the arctic, and at a refuge for strays, etc. and I think the editors could have done without one of the two Jane Eyre-esque asides to Reader. But I came away with more than just an appreciation of nature and the great outdoors, but also for humanity, and great writing like this.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this compilation of essays from various writers outlining their various (mis)adventures . Sometimes humorous and always inspiring and interesting. Recommended for sure. I 'd enjoy reading another volume like this.
My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Lisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher. and the author for allowing me to read and review a digital copy of this book. Lots of interesting true memoirs of travelers and explorers all over the world and the experiences they encountered.

[Don Gubler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not stories, this is pictures and the short stories about the taking of the pictures. The pictures are wow.

[Ava]

pg 34

[Victoria S · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a female hiker, climber, and skier, this book was disappointment after disappointment. Yes, I love Outside Magazine and the writing was good, and I learned a lot from these essays. But the amount of stories written by white men was problematic and boring.

Most stories were told from a straight, white, male perspective, as demonstrated in the descriptions of others as "Latino", "tribes", etc. I never once heard a description of someone as a "white man" or "white woman" - white is the default in this book, and for something published in 2018, we need to do better.

A few examples of this are one essay where two white men visit a remote village. The moral of the story? the native trive are "just like us" - a trope that is tired and problematic. Why are native tribes assumed to be an "Other" and not "just like us"? Also, a story of a WoMeN wHo Is A bUlLfIgHtEr, a shocking notion to the author. A reminder this was published in 2018 and not 1960.

This collection of essays exposed Outside for its problematic core: women are in the outdoors, and just because the mainstream magazines don't amplify it, they're shocked to learn what all of us know. This book was published in 2018 with essays from the 1990s-2013. Of course there are women in the outdoors. This is news to Outside but not to the rest of us.

I'd love to see a new version of this published in 2020 with stories from women and BIPOC, but since Outside has barely started amplifying these voices, it's likely we won't see another collection like this until 2030.

Also a trigger warning about suicide and animal cruelty should be added to this book.

[Sam O'H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, it was fine. I didn't love it as much as I thought I would. I think the storytelling style is just formatted in a way that lends itself to periodicals better than to books. What I mean by that is, as an individual blurb in a magazine, I would have found any of these stories to be terribly interesting and would have really captured my attention. But in the book format, I just found myself wanting more.
To me, this book read as the abbreviated version of a lot of stories that I'd like to know more about. It was a collection of literary appetizers that left me wanting for the rest of my meal.

[Malin Friess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outside magazine has debuted some of the best adventure writers....Sebastien Junger, John Krakauer, Kevin Fedarko, Edward Abbey. This book is a collection of some of the best short stories ever published in Outside Magazine.

Just for fun read about Groover Boy. Kevin Fedarko (author of the fastest trip down the Grand Canyon "the Emerald Mile" ) had fantasized about being drift boat captain. The first step..and at the age of 40 begins at the bottom-- you first start out as captain of the "poop boat" steering three weeks of waste through some of the gnarliest white water in America.

4 stars.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories. Eclectic mix of stories, with some having nothing to do with the outdoors but just activities in general. I honestly think this would be a much more widely read book if the cover design was different. It’s a book of the best stories Outside mag has written. Awesome story quality, etc, and yet it’s a dud. The cover makes NO sense and does the book zero justice. Neil D Cotterill you shit the bed! Change it!

Stories I want to remember:

The one that got away: story about fly fishing the deschutes river with an old guide. Sad.

Meltdown: dad brings his sons around the world. sons fight, quality discourse, good prose

The undisputed king of dogsled tourism: my favorite story.

The beautiful game: following argentian soccer fan clubs (mobs) at the very top. Boca juniors, etc

All the jittery horses: Mongolian marathon horse race—the Mongol derby. Written by a cowboy

The world’s toughest bike race is not in France: second favorite story. mountain bike race from canada border to mexico border. Well written and hilarious

Because it’s there, sort of: finding lat/long confluences and the adventures that come with it

Reversal of Fortune: RIP Lucky Chance

[Hayden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were really really cool (canyon poop guy, mongolian horse race guy, continental divide bike guy, confluence hunting), and some of the stories were super lame and you could tell the writer was your lame ivy-league journalist type (jungle guy, iceland vacation guy). They put possibly the lamest article I've ever read as the very first story and I almost just shelved the book after reading those first few pages. Besides that there was some really cool stuff, enjoyed learning more about some niche outdoor topics. 3.7

[Spencer Schultze · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology is generally drawn from a more narrow time range than I’d have expected, but the stories are delightfully varied in subject matter, each indeed fittingly described as wild.

I enjoyed the manageable length of each piece and found each to be easily consumed as a relatively quick bed time story of sorts. Fun to read and well curated.

Of all the great stories in this book, I most enjoyed the competitive water sliding story starting on page 173. Hilarious!

[Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Out There" is a collection of two dozen or so very entertaining essays about outdoor topics: from a guy who apprentices himself to a Colorado River rafting company in the Grand Canyon (his job is collecting and hauling out all the human excrement), to a botanist finding truly wild cacao trees that make the best chocolate in the world, to a manic bicycle race across the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico. Every story shows the diversity of human obsessions in an interesting way.

[Page Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful compilation of stories that range from incredible, to esoteric, to lighthearted, to melancholy. Out There fulfills its promise of taking its readers to the fringe. It contains a ports you’ve never heard of, people with seemingly dubious interests, and journeys to places you didn’t know existed.

My one critique is a lack of photographs alongside the stories. Even a single black-and-white photo would do, but the pages are just text. Overall, a great book full of memorable tales.

[Kenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a great compilation of essays written by Outside magazine. I really enjoyed the wide variety of topics covered— I learned a lot of interesting facts and finished the book feeling invigorated and inspired! All that being said, this was by far one of my favorite books that I’ve read so far this year!

[Dray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone in my family had read this book before i got to it. The stories are wildly different, covering all types of human endeavor and craziness. I found it entertaining and worthy of the title. recommended.

[Haley Carlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book instilling such a Sense of adventure I went out on a hike at the completion. A few of my favorite chapters included the Great Divide Race, the Mongolian Horse Race, and the radioactive Bikini Atoll. It makes me want to switch careers and become a writer for Outside magazine.

[Michelle McDaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“They Call Me Groover Boy” was my favorite story. It’s funny, and inspirational about a rafting guide on the Colorado River. I love environmental journalism. It’s kinda my thing ;) whitewater river rafting is awesome and so are rafting/camp trips for multiple days!

[Holly Wirth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and interesting stories of fringe athletes, remote locations, and adventurous spirits from around the globe told in bite-sized tales for easy digestion. Experiencing the great outdoors from the comfort of the indoors.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A collection of articles from Outside magazine when it was still known for the quality of its writing. I used to be a big fan of the magazine, so I was already familiar with quite a few of the articles. But that didn’t diminish my enjoyment in the least.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really the year of armchair extreme adventure reading. Loved this collection, looking forward to my Outside mag subscription courtesy of the wife.

[Scott Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a great collection of long magazine articles. I read their articles weekly, so reading the best of the best over the life of the publication was a delight.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read! Was genuinely sad when I finished it. Even subscribed to outside magazine because of this book.