Susan Spencer-Wendel's 6 favorite books

The courageous journalist recommends works by Tom Wolfe and Sylvia Nasar

Susan Spencer-Wendel's new memoir shares her inspiring story about living with a terminal illness.
(Image credit: Courtesy of the author)

Alone by Adm. Richard E. Byrd (Island Press, $27.50). I am frozen in a wheelchair these days by ALS, so books are divine escape. I treasure those that offer an extraordinary sense of place, as this 1938 classic does. Alone is Byrd's account of the six months he spent researching in Antarctic darkness, slowly dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, witnessing phenomena denied most mortals. The book prompted me to travel from Florida to the Yukon in winter to try to see the glorious aurora he describes so well.

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (Picador, $16). Astronauts speed-racing in their sports cars and orbiting in a disabled space capsule: Thrill and terror are indeed kissing cousins. Thirty-two years after Wolfe published this 1979 best seller, its celebration of the U.S. space program sent me scurrying up Florida's coast to catch the final shuttle launch.

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