The top AT memoirs

According to a recent poll I started on Whiteblaze.net, the top five AT thru-hiking memoirs are:

1. Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery, J.R. Tate [8 votes]
2. AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, David Miller [6]
3. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson [3]
4. As Far As the Eye Can See, David Brill, tied with
5. Walking with Spring, Earl V. Shaffer [2 each]

 Walking with Spring recounts a WWII veteran's 1948 thru-hike. AKA the first ever thru hike. First printed privately in 1981; 160 pages.

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail recounts a middle-aged engineer's 2003 thru-hike. Published 2006; 236 pages.

Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery is a retired marine and four-time thru-hiker's account of his first thru hike in 1990. Published in 2001 [originally self-publihsed]; 554 pages.

As Far As the Eye Can See recounts a 1979 thru hike. Originally published in 1990; 192 pages.

A Walk in the Woods is a travel writer's tale of a botched thru-hike in the late 1990s. Published in 1999; 274 pages.

The diversity in these memoirs isn't in the authors, almost all of whom wrote or hiked and wrote as middle-aged, white men, but in the eras of the hikes - 1948, before anyone knew about the trail; 1979, the first wave of the modern thru-hiker and then through the 1990s and early 2000s.