Adventure Expedition

The Plant Hunter's Atlas is a volume telling some of the most extraordinary tales of horticultural discovery and exploring the characters behind the stories. Taking in the world's inhabited continents and spanning the centuries, the stories range from tales of derring-do in the age of discovery to modern-day botanists working at the cutting-edge of science. The text explores how plant hunters have been inspired by everything from scientific curiosity to economic greed, and their own ingrained sense of adventure.

In this grand and astonishing account, Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration,” Andrée’s expedition was followed by nearly the entire world, and it made him an international legend.

The following is a selection from three books that were published in 1894, 1910, and 1905 respectively by early pioneers who ventured into Tibet. They are Among the Tibetans, India and Tibet, To Lhassa at Last. Although as Westerners their perspectives are culturally bounded (and too often myopic), they each write vividly and occasionally with great insight about what they experienced in their travels. Sadly, however, two of the narratives are militaristic and we witness an unwanted invasion on behalf of the British to gain controlling interest in the region.

Meet married couple Chris and Marty. At midlife, they unexpectedly find themselves weighing the responsibility of parenthood against the possibility of one more grand adventure. After securing care for their 12-year-old son, they set off to undertake one of the hardest challenges on the planet: Ski 570 miles from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole. With no guide or resupply. Riveting and inspiring, The Expedition is about the power of family and community, the adventurous spirit that dwells within us all, and breaking through to feel fully alive.

Seven years ago, readers and listeners around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

In Polish: A stunning story of the trailblazing expedition into the heart of the most dangerous jungle in the world, full of venomous snakes, jaguars, and sandflies which spread infections. This is were the legendary, cursed City of the Monkey God was supposed to be. Many years of expeditions didn't show any results, until Steve Elkins, a documentalist, discoverer, and laureate of the Emmy Award, managed to find the position of the mistery Pre-Columbian city thanks to the use of modern laser technology.

Find out what happens when a Mars Expedition unwittingly recruits a psychopath among its crew on a one-way trip to the red planet. Emil Lance loosened the tight tie around his neck. He knew that he was about to feed himself to a pack of hungry wolves. A room full of terrified, angry, and grieving family members awaited him. Instead of turning away, instead of letting someone else handle it like any sane man would, he let his conscience get the better of him.

Clara Ketterling-Dunbar is one of twenty-eight crew members of The Resolute—a ship meant for an Antarctic expedition now marooned on an ice floe one hundred miles from the shore of the continent. An eighteen-year-old American, Clara has told the crew she’s twenty-one years old and Canadian. Since the war broke out, sentiment toward Americans has not been the most favorable, and Clara will be underestimated enough simply for being a woman without also giving away just how young she is.

In 1856 Paul Du Chaillu marched into the equatorial wilderness of West Africa determined to bag an animal that, according to legend, was nothing short of a monster. When he emerged three years later, the summation of his efforts only hinted at what he'd experienced in one of the most dangerous regions on earth. Armed with an astonishing collection of zoological specimens, Du Chaillu leapt from the physical challenges of the jungle straight into the center of the biggest issues of the time.

In Polish: This is a story about the journey of two brothers who travelled through the largest river in the world on...bikes. But not ordinary bikes - they were "Amazonian” bikes. The story is as bodacious as the trip itself, which seemed like an unachievable madness, but turned out to be a great adventure and a valuable life lesson. For one of its heroes it was a dream come true, for another the last chance for salvation. The book is written by Piotr Chmieliński - the first person on Earth who sailed through the Amazon River in a kayak.

Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.

July 12th 1776. Captain James Cook sails from Plymouth in the Resolution in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. It is his third amazing voyage of discovery and this is the story he might have written. Hammond Innes has created a brilliantly imagined diary, showing a great man stretched to his limits. It is a voyage that will sweep Captain Cook and his crew from the icy wasteland of the Arctic, to the tropical waters of Hawaii.

The year is 1735. Twelve unruly men board ships bound for South America. Their mission? To discover the true shape of the Earth. They will be exposed to a wilderness of dangers none can imagine. The survivors won't return for 10 years. An almost forgotten moment in history, a story for our times, this is the true story of the mission to discover the shape of the Earth.

With the utterance of a single line - "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" - a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure - defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement.

Let’s talk about the expeditions of Zebulon Pike. He was an American brigadier general and adventurer who explored the new Louisiana territory. Because of his significance contribution to the US expansion, the El Capitan mountain in Colorado was named after him - the Pikes Peak. Learn more about the life, times, and adventure of Zebulon Pike.

Timothy Hope, desperate to impress the beautiful but disdainful Lady Misericordia, stows away on Lord Daunt's expedition to the North Pole, and finds himself caught up in an adventure of high seas, deep crevasses, slavering wolves, reindeer sleigh rides and much, much more, with only his wits and inventiveness to keep him and his friends alive.

When Columbus claimed to have discovered America in 1492, and the Borgia Pope claimed it as a New World for Catholic Spain, the Vatican started a 500 hundred year conspiracy to conceal the true story of Viking America. In this groundbreaking work by the author of The Early English Settlement of Orkney and Shetland, the true extent of the Viking discovery and colonization of the eastern seaboard of America is fully examined, taking into account the new archaeological, linguistic, and DNA evidence which supplements the historic account.

In magisterial prose, Erling narrates his epic, record-making journey, probing the physical challenges and psychological motivations for embarking on such an epic expedition, the history of the territory’s exploration, its place in legend and art, and the thrilling adventures he experienced during the trek. It is another example of what bestselling author Robert MacFarlane has called “Kagge’s extraordinary life in wild places,”

A desperate distress call from Earth reaches the new colony on Lumera. Now, the fate of all life in the universe as we know it is at stake. An enemy believed dead threatens the peace between humans and Kidj'Dan: Dr. Elias Fox, the unscrupulous politician, has mutated into a walking superweapon thanks to his hyperbots, and has only one goal: revenge.

For almost 500 years, human beings have been finding ways to circle the Earth - by sail, steam, or liquid fuel; by cycling, driving, flying, going into orbit, even by using their own bodily power. The story begins with the first centuries of circumnavigation, when few survived the attempt: In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with five ships and 270 men, but only one ship and 35 men returned, not including Magellan, who died in the Philippines. Starting with these dangerous voyages, Joyce Chaplin takes us on a trip of our own as we travel with Francis Drake, William Dampier, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and James Cook.