Showing titles in Expeditions & Discoveries

The ubiquitous picture of the Vikings as horn-helmeted, brutish, hairy giants that mercilessly marauded among the settlements of Northern Europe is based on a smattering of facts combined with an abundance of prejudicial historical writing by those who were on the receiving end of Viking depredations. At the same time, much of the popular picture of the Vikings is a result of the romantic imagination of novelists and artists. However, the Vikings' reputation for ferocious seaborne attacks along the coasts of Northern Europe is no exaggeration.

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes...

The Pleistocene spans a period from around 2.5 million years ago to just over 12,000 years ago, and it was an epoch of enormous change on Earth, mainly characterized by climate changes involving fluctuations between periods of extreme heat and long periods of glaciation. This period is commonly known as the Ice Age, despite the fact there were actually a number of separate periods of cold.

Cândido Rondon is by any measure the greatest tropical explorer in history. Between 1890 and 1930, he navigated scores of previously unmapped rivers, traversed untrodden mountain ranges, and hacked his way through jungles so inhospitable that even native peoples had avoided them—and led Theodore Roosevelt and his son, Kermit, on their celebrated "River of Doubt" journey in 1913-14. Originally published in Brazil, Into the Amazon is the first comprehensive biography of the Indigenous Brazilian explorer, scientist, stateseman, and conservationist.

Until the early 1870s, very little was known about the creatures lurking in the depths of our oceans. The first systematic investigation into life in our oceans was made during the circumnavigation of the HMS Challenger. Scientists credit this voyage as the beginning of modern oceanography. In this book, Graham Bell takes listeners through the voyage station by station, following the progress of the expedition and introducing some of the new and strange animals that were hauled up from the depths of the ocean and seen by human eyes for the first time.

Jens Munk er en skildring af den danske søkaptajn Jens Munk, der levede 1570-1628. Det er beretningen om hans eventyrlige og omskiftelige liv, som bl.a. førte ham til Sydamerika og Nordkap, og om hans kampe i Christian IV's tjeneste mod kapere og svenskere. Bogen kulminerer med skildringen af Jens Munks forsøg på at finde en gennemsejling til Kina nord om Amerika i 1619-20. Under denne ekspedition måtte han overvintre i bunden af Hudson Bay, hvor situationen udviklede sig til en katastrofe. Af de 65 søfolk overlevede, foruden Jens Munk, kun to mænd.

The exploration of North America was the undertaking of adventurers. Typically, these adventurers were enthusiastic young men accustomed to hard living, unforeseen twists and turns in their ventures, and many adversities. These traits characterize the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of the early 19th century.

Nick Neely chronicles his 650-mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco, following the route of the first overland Spanish expedition into what was soon called Alta California. Led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769, the expedition sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world.

A tale of Gilded Age corruption and greed from the frontier of Alaska to America's capital. In the feverish, money-making age of railroad barons, political machines, and gold rushes, corruption was the rule, not the exception. Yet the Republican mogul "Big Alex" McKenzie defied even the era's...

Over the course of a decade, authors Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar conducted a series of interviews with Sherpas from Darjeeling, as well as their family members, descendants, friends, and contemporary climbers. Headstrap weaves a vivid tapestry of this particular Sherpa community, giving them the recognition in mountaineering literature that they deserve.

In London, in the summer of 1928, as usual, a misty haze fell over the city. It was early September, and warm, damp humidity lingered over the lush countryside. In Paddington, drizzle clung to the air as Alexander Fleming—a well-known scientist—climbed the stairs to the second floor of St. Mary’s Hospital After a few weeks away for a much-needed vacation in Suffolk,

If you want to discover the captivating history of the New World and learn more about transatlantic slave trade, then this book is for you. It includes: The Americas, Age of Discovery, Christopher Columbus, and Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Long the dominant icon embodying the spirit of America's frontier past, the image of the cowboy no longer stands alone as the ultimate symbol of independence and self-reliance. The great canvas of the western landscape-in art, books, film-is today shared by the figures called "Mountain Men."...

L'impresa di Ferdinando Magellano ha rappresentato un'incommensurabile scoperta ai fini della conoscenza: una nuova visione del mondo si faceva largo, indiscutibile, perchè sondata da essere umani in persona e non più soltanto frutto di speculazioni filosofiche, una rivoluzione culturale che apriva le porte a una nuova era.

Far out in the south-eastern part of the Pacific Ocean lies one of the world's most remote islands. Located over 2,000 miles away from Chile and South America, the nearest continent, and over 1,300 miles away from its nearest inhabited neighbor, Pitcairn Island, Easter Island is a solitary mass of land alone at the southeastern-most point of the Polynesian Triangle.

The year 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailor, scholar, and storyteller, has written the first book-length history of the 1609 adventure that put New York on the map. Hudson was commissioned by the mighty Dutch East India Company to find a northeastern passage over Russia to the lucrative ports of China. But the inscrutable Hudson, defying his orders, turned his ship around and instead headed west....

Brimming with enthralling details and personalities, Toby Lester's The Fourth Part of the World spotlights Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map and recounts the epic tale of the mariners and scholars who facilitated this watershed of Western history.

At stake in 1896 was the new idea that some landscapes should be collectively, permanently owned by a democratic government. Although many people today think of public lands as an American birthright, their very existence was then in doubt and dependent on a merger of the talents of these two men. Natural Rivals examines a time of environmental threat and political dysfunction not unlike our own and reveals the complex dynamic that gave birth to America’s rich public lands legacy. 

Long before Robinson Crusoe became a novel, real people faced the open sea alone. This is not a retelling of fiction. It is the quiet, true history behind one of literature's most enduring ideas: what happens when a person is left entirely alone.

From internationally bestselling historian Giles Milton comes a gripping tale of exploration, survival, and geopolitical power in the Arctic Circle. The year was 1913. Charismatic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was obsessed with a frozen speck of land in the Siberian Arctic: Wrangel Island...