13 Best Camping Books

Dave Canterbury introduces wilderness skills through essential equipment and ways to use natural resources. The guide covers selecting a kit, making tools, obtaining and preparing food, and protecting against the elements, with an emphasis on practical backcountry preparation.

This illustrated travel guide explores all fifty U.S. states, combining familiar attractions with lesser-known museums, outdoor experiences, and local curiosities. State facts accompany suggestions for things to see and do, with an additional section covering Canada's provinces and territories.

John 'Lofty' Wiseman surveys survival skills across climates and emergency situations. Illustrated instruction covers preparation, navigation, shelter, food, and first aid, with this edition also addressing urban dangers, security, and coping when ordinary services are unavailable.

Bryson attempts to hike the Appalachian Trail with his out-of-shape and recovering alcoholic friend, Stephen Katz. Facing bears, bugs, and difficult terrain, the duo delivers a hilarious account of friendship and the American wilderness.

Peg Couch collects more than two hundred recipes for cooking over an outdoor fire, including dishes made with sticks, foil packets, Dutch ovens, and skillets. Breakfasts, main meals, and desserts share space with campfire activities and cooking tips.

Emma Frisch combines recipes for outdoor gatherings with menus, shopping lists and preparation advice. The cookbook covers work to do before departure, packing food and equipment, and preparing meals at campgrounds or cabins using varied outdoor cooking methods.

Horace Kephart's historical manual examines camping equipment, clothing, camp cooking, navigation and traditional woodland skills. This reprint preserves the shorter early version of the work, offering a record of American recreational camping practices from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Tristan Gooley explains how features of the landscape, plants, animals, clouds and sky can reveal information about the outdoors. Stories and observations introduce ways to interpret natural clues while walking, navigating and paying closer attention to changing conditions.

A group of schoolboys crash on a deserted island and try to govern themselves without adults. Fear, power struggles, and the fantasy of a beast slowly turn play into savagery.

Beth McRoberts introduces the planning involved in a first camping trip, from choosing gear and packing food to staying comfortable outdoors. Recipes, activity suggestions, first aid topics, and advice for camping with children address common concerns for beginners.

Paul Auerbach presents a portable reference to medical problems that can arise outdoors. Organized explanations and illustrations address first aid and emergencies in settings such as mountains, deserts, forests, and the sea, focusing on situations encountered away from immediate medical facilities.

Joel Hooks and Pepperell Braiding Company explain how to turn paracord into outdoor accessories. Step-by-step photographs introduce knots, wraps, and braids used in bracelets, lanyards, grips, straps, and bottle holders, with guidance on materials and finishing cord ends.

Stolen from a comfortable home in California and sold into the Yukon sled dog trade, Buck is forced to learn the brutal law of club and fang. As the trail hardens him and the wild calls more strongly, he must choose between loyalty to men and freedom in the wilderness.