If you haven't read Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust is a great place to start. You could call Wanderlust a cultural history of walking, and like a good walk, the pleasure of reading Solnit is in coming upon the unexpected vista - from wandering Greek philosophers to the history of mountaineering, the unexpected lies around every turn. -bugaboo

The Places in Between recounts Rory Stewart's trek across Afghanistan - on foot, through territory still held by the Taliban, over high mountain passes, in the middle of winter. A kind of post-9/11 Marco Polo, Stewart writes from within the tradition of the West meets East travelogue, but his unsentimental style avoids romantic orientalist cliché. A ripping great travel yarn, and best of all, a heroic dog figures prominently. -bugaboo

You might be familiar with Joe Simpson's Touching the Void - a climber, waking after a horrific fall, lies injured in the bottom of a crevasse. He survives not by making the obvious choice to climb up and out but by crawling down further into the darkness--a harrowng descent that reads like Dante. This Game of Ghosts picks up where Touching the Void left off; more accidents on icy peaks, certainly, but with a more introspective and rewarding turn. -bugaboo