Expedition History

Richard Henry Dana called this book a "a voice from the sea". It had an influence on both Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville, both of whom sang its praises. Dana was a law student at Harvard College who decided, in 1834, to take a break from his studies in order to experience the "real world" by signing on as a common sailor for a two year voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. He kept a journal which he turned into a book after the voyage.

In the summer of 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira - archaeological treasure hunter and denizen of Jerusalem's bustling marketplace - arrived unannounced in London claiming to have discovered the world's oldest Bible scroll. When news of the discovery leaked to the excited English press, Shapira became a household name. But before the British Museum could acquire them, Shapira's nemesis, French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau, denounced his find as a fraud.

In 1955, a young TV producer named David Attenborough was approached by six recent graduates from Oxford and Cambridge universities determined to drive the entire length of Eurasia, as it was then known, from London to Singapore. Many tried this before, but none succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave The Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition enough film reels to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team was told in Attenborough's Travellers' Tales and captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity.

The height of Mount Everest was first measured in 1850, but the closest any Westerner got to Everest during the next 71 years, until 1921, was 40 miles. The Hunt for Mount Everest tells the story of the 71-year quest to find the world's highest mountain. It's a tale of high drama, of larger-than-life characters - George Everest, Francis Younghusband, George Mallory, Lord Curzon, Edward Whymper - and a few quiet heroes: Alexander Kellas, the 13th Dalai Lama, Charles Bell.

This Deadly Expeditions tale transports listeners back in time to follow the Donner Party’s disastrous trek west and their struggle to survive.

English explorer Henry Hudson had long searched for a quicker, northern sailing route from Europe to Asia. Three previous expeditions had failed. In 1610, he embarked again to find the fabled Northwest Passage. But when icy waters stranded Hudson and the Discovery in a bay for the winter, tensions flared. The crew lost faith in their captain’s leadership and began to plot...mutiny!

In 1911, a relatively unknown physicist named Albert Einstein published his preliminary theory of gravity. But it hadn't been tested. To do that, he needed a photograph of starlight as it passed the sun during a total solar eclipse. So began a nearly decade-long quest by seven determined astronomers from observatories in four countries, who traveled the world during five eclipses to capture the elusive sight. Over the years, they faced thunderstorms, the ravages of a world war, lost equipment, and local superstitions.

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.

Mysterious Polynesia: The Myths, Legends, and Mysteries of the Polynesians chronicles some of these remarkable stories, as well as lingering mysteries across the region. You will learn about Polynesia like never before.

On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the earth and the sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system - but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs: eight years later, the scientists would have another opportunity to succeed.

With Straits, celebrated historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto subjects the surviving sources to the most meticulous scrutiny ever, providing a timely and engrossing biography of the real Ferdinand Magellan. The truth that Fernández-Armesto uncovers about Magellan's life, his character, and the events of his ill-fated voyage offers up a stranger, darker, and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been celebrated for half a millennium.

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university - a history major, no less! - he's reached middle age with a third-grader's grasp of early America. In fact, he's mislaid more than a century of American history, the period separating Columbus' landing in 1492 from the arrival of English colonists at Jamestown in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between?

An extraordinary lost chapter in the history of World War I: the story of America’s year-long invasion of Russia, in which a contingency of brave soldiers fought the Red Army and brutal conditions during the fall and winter of 1918-1919.

It began as President Ulysses S. Grant's bid for international glory after the Civil War - America's first attempt to reach the North Pole. It ended with Captain Charles Hall's death under suspicious circumstances, dissension among sailors, scientists, and explorers, and the ship's evacuation and eventual sinking. Then came a brutal struggle for survival by 33 men, women, and children stranded on the polar ice.

Mawson's Will is the dramatic story of what Sir Edmund Hillary calls "the most outstanding solo journey ever recorded in Antarctic history." For weeks in Antarctica, Douglas Mawson faced some of the most daunting conditions ever known to man: blistering wind, snow, and cold; loss of his companion, his dogs and supplies, the skin on his hands and the soles of his feet; thirst, starvation, disease, snowblindness - and he survived.

Here is the story of the infamous 1910 race to the South Pole, as told by its fearless yet desperate leader, Robert Falcon Scott. The New York Times called Scott's Last Expedition "A splendid record of heroism not soon to be forgotten."

Australia's best-selling nonfiction author of all time. Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, was Australia's greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, he led an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. After setting up Main Base at Cape Denision and Western Base on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an extraordinary sledging trek with his companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz.

In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000-foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission.

 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.  

"The golden age of piracy" generally refers to the era when history's most famous pirates roamed the seas of the West Indies from 1670-1720.