The Emerald Mile

Kevin Fedarko recounts the fastest boat run ever made through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado, during the 1983 flood. That winter the largest El Niño on record sent a series of storms across the West, and the spring snowmelt drove so much water toward the Glen Canyon Dam that federal officials feared it might fail. With rafting trips already wrecked, one person dead and new launches banned, three river guides secretly put a hand-built wooden dory, the Emerald Mile, into the river below the dam. Its captain, Kenton Grua, meant to use the flood as a slingshot through 277 miles of white water. The book became a New York Times best seller.

A What CEOs are reading feature listed it as a book read by Autodesk chief executive Carl Bass.