The Coral Island

One man, one island, twenty eight years of building everything from nothing. The book that started the whole castaway genre and still reads like an inventory of survival.

Daniel Defoe

A shipwrecked family turns a tropical island into a working farm, one invention at a time. Less about danger than about what people can build when there is nothing to build with.

Johann David Wyss

A stolen dog is shipped north into the Klondike and unlearns every soft thing he knew. Short, hard and told almost entirely from inside the animal.

Jack London

The Call of the Wild run in reverse: a wolf born in the Yukon is dragged toward people, and has to survive them first. The starvation opening is among the best London wrote.

Jack London