I love non-fiction stories of adventure, exploration and survival - stuff like Into Thin Air, Endurance, The Lost City of Z etc. Something about them scratches that itch of going along on a journey into uncharted territories, mysterious, never-explored frontiers and the often horrific things that the people that embark upon these journeys go through.
Candice Millard's The River of Doubt is definitely one of the best non-fiction narratives I've read in this niche. In a nutshell, it's about a scientific exploration led by Teddy Roosevelt (yes, that guy) to explore the length of the titular River of Doubt, or the Rio da Duvida, which was at the time an unexplored tributary of the Amazon river deep in the jungles of Brazil.
What follows is an account of the frankly horrific journey that Roosevelt and the expedition go through as they explore the river, the kind of shit that makes you go "yeah that's gonna be a no from me dawg". It works really well on two fronts. First is of course the exploration aspect, and the wealth of historical, cultural and scientific knowledge about this region in the early 1900s and how the gradual exploration of the Amazon river and the rainforest impacted the indigenous people that lived there (spoiler alert: capitalism and colonialism were as evil then as they are now).
The second is the character study on old Teddy himself. He really is a fascinating individual, a guy who seems to basically go out of his way to put himself through suffering and hardship, just so he could prove to himself that he fought against the world and won. Like he does this crazy-ass expedition as almost an act of self-flagellation after badly losing his bid for a third presidential term. Oh and he does it with a friggin' bullet lodged in his body from an earlier assassination attempt. He puts himself through starvation, physical ailments, deadly threats from mysterious indigenous tribes and an infection that nearly kills him simply for the love of the game. Foolhardy? Biggest brass balls in the world? Maybe a bit of both.
(Another thing this book greatly helped with is convincing me to never, ever set foot in the Amazon rainforest)
So yeah if you love these historical adventure/exploration stories, River of Doubt is a must-read.
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