Booklist

We Swam The Grand Canyon by Bill Beers - an amazing, humorous, horrifying and funny story about two guys who think they can and should swim the Grand Canyon.

River (One Man's Journey Down The Colorado, Source to Sea) by Colin Fletcher - Colin Fletcher wrote a book I read as a child called The Man Who Walked Through Time about his hike through the entire Grand Canyon (top to bottom) which included naked hiking and food drops from airplanes.  At the age of 70 or so - he's back.  This time hiking and floating the entire Green and Colorado River - which includes Cataract and the Grand Canyon.  He's kind of a curmudgeon.

Riverman - The Story of Bus Hatch by Roy Webb -  - Bus Hatch is a character.  This book is full of funny little stories about Bus' introduction to river running (he was a cousin of the sheriff of Vernal, Utah. The sheriff had Parley Galloway (the son of Nathaniel Galloway) under arrest for poaching beaver, and Parley promised to teach the sheriff and Bus river running if they let him out, they did and he vanished), his early years, and his inability to take to Mormonism, his contracting business and his part in saving Dinosaur National Monument from damming at the hands of the Bureau of Reclamation.

The Doing of the Thing - The Brief Brilliant Whitewater Career of Buzz Holmstrom by Welch, Conley, and Dimock - Buzz was brought up in the logging camps of Oregon.  Surrounded by nature and streams, he grew to know and love the land and the rivers that crossed it.  He hand built boats to make many of the first descents of western rivers.  Perhaps his greatest feat was rowing from Green River, Wyoming, down the Green River, through the confluences of the Yampa and Colorado Rivers, all the way to the dam at the just filling Lake Mead. He learns along the way that women have a place on the river.  The thing that impressed me most about Buzz was his incredible humility in the face of his awesome accomplishments.  The ending of the story is a bit of a bummer though - as Buzz's life is ended either by suicide or murder.

Dominguez-Escalante Journal - This is the history of a group of Spanish Missionaries who are to find a route from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Monterey, California in the 1540s.  They suffer.  They eat horses.  They convert some Native Americans but not the Hopi.  They give up as winter is fast approaching and they go home.

Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca - The journal is written by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.  He landed in Florida (around Tampa Bay) and, after blunders by his superiors, suffers years of wandering along the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Galveston area.  He ends up being a slave for a while and kind of a shaman.  Amazing story with many interesting revelations about tribes that no longer exist and with the first treatment or understanding of Native Americans as human beings.

Shackleton's Boat Journey by F. A. Worsley - Sir Ernest Shackleton was an Antarctic explorer who attempted three trips to the South Pole.  The first with Robert Falcon Scott that was turned back before reaching the pole.  The second with Sir Ernest (or the Boss as he was known by his men) leading the expedition which came up a mere 97 miles short of the pole.  The pole was achieved by Roald Amundsen (from Norway).  Shackleton then attempts the last remaining Antarctic first - a continental crossing.  He and his team fail to even reach land as pack ice surrounds their ship and eventually crushes it, leaving the men three small boats with which to reach civilization.  F. A. Worsley was the captain of the Endurance (the expedition's ship).  A tale of bravery, suffering and ultimately triumph.