Riding tubes in Venezuela. BASE jumping in Europe. Climbing big walls in Yosemite. Riding bulls in Texas.

These first-person stories from acclaimed climber and adventurer John Long may be vastly different in content, but they share an identifiable emotional texture, tone and delivery, and fundamentally are of one piece. This is storytelling at its best—nonfiction that reads like fiction. In Stories from the Dirt, the action leaves you breathless, but it’s the characters that really leave a lasting mark. Like all stories worth a damn, this collection is all about the people.