Explorer Memoirs

Experience Alexandra David-Neel's captivating and inspirational journey to become the first Western woman to reach the Tibetan holy city of Lhasa and be received by the Dalai Lama. Enduring backbreaking travel, threatening militaries, disease, and countless other dangers, David-Neel's journey is an epic demonstration of perseverance and courage.

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor.

Faced with an empty nest, stagnant jobs, and an economy in freefall, Kim Brown Seely and her husband decided to embark on a grand adventure. On an impulse, they purchased a sailboat, learned to sail, and set off toward untamed wilderness in search of the elusive blonde Kermode bear that only lives in a secluded forest in the Pacific Northwest.

Adventure, politics, suspense, drama, diplomacy, romance, and personal tragedy combine to make this outstanding work of scholarship about Captain Meriwether Lewis, hand-picked by President Thomas Jefferson to explore and acquire the American West. Browse more Ambrose, including his latest, Nothing Like It in the World.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noe Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother. A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At 19, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories and his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala.

In this intoxicating concoction of history, travelogue, and memoir, one of the perfume industry’s leading scouts of natural ingredients tells the story of the precious ingredients needed to make our favorite fragrances.

The Last Great Mountain tells the story of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga the third highest but reputedly the hardest mountain in the world. It was an astonishing achievement for a British team led by Everest veteran Charles Evans. Drawing on interviews, diaries and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey begins his story in 1905 with the disastrous first attempt on the mountain by a team led by Aleister Crowley, explores the three dramatic German expeditions of the the late 1920s and brings it all to a climax 50 years later with the first ascent by Joe Brown and George Band.

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.

Rebecca Rusch has run the gauntlet of endurance sports over her career as a professional athlete—climbing, adventure racing, whitewater rafting, cross-country skiing, and mountain biking—racking up accolades and world championships along the way.

Sir Hubert Wilkins is one of the most remarkable Australians who ever lived. The son of pioneer pastoralists in South Australia, Hubert studied engineering before moving on to photography, then sailing for England and a job producing films with the Gaumont Film Co. Brave and bold, he became a polar expeditioner, a brilliant war photographer, a spy in the Soviet Union, a pioneering aviator-navigator, a death-defying submariner - all while being an explorer and chronicler of the planet and its life forms that would do Vasco da Gama and Sir David Attenborough proud.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has climbed the Eiger and Mount Everest. He's crossed both Poles on foot. He's been a member of the SAS and fought a bloody guerrilla war in Oman. And yet he confesses that his fear of heights is so great that he'd rather send his wife up a ladder to clean the gutters than do it himself. In Fear, the world's greatest explorer delves into his own experiences to try to explain what fear is, how it happens and how he's overcome it so successfully.

An old-fashioned quest by a modern-day adventurer. When A. J. Mackinnon quits his job in Australia, he knows only that he longs to travel to the well at the world’s end, a mysterious pool on a remote Scottish island whose waters, legend has it, hold the secret to eternal youth.

A veteran of World War I, British RAF Captain C.K. Shepherd arrived in New York in June 1919, bought a top-of-the-line Henderson four-cylinder motorcycle, and headed west on a solo cross-country adventure to see America. He set off on his adventures, arriving in San Francisco two months later. Having completed his voyage, he sold his beloved motorcycle, dubbed “Lizzie”, on the street in San Francisco and then made his way back to his home in Birmingham, England.

February 1, 2003. A light flashed over a Texas sky and twisted metal rained across the countryside. As images of the wreckage from the Space Shuttle Columbia streamed across the nation's television screens, they became forever burned into our memories. But behind those images were stories that remained untold...until now.

If you haven't seen a Discovery Channel gold-hunting show, you might picture a gold prospector as a relic of the Wild West: a TNT-toting bearded old man wildly swinging a pick on the hunt for nuggets, guided by old maps, superstition, legends and instinct. It's still predominantly a man's world, and still often fanatical, but these days the golden dream attracts people from all walks of life—and 25-year-old Tyler Mahoney (Australian star of the Discovery Channel's Gold Rush series) is leading the way.

Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small, green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second work, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Echoes. Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.

Ed Stafford - adventurer extraordinaire and Guinness World Record holder for walking the length of the Amazon River - likes a challenge. Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for 60 days equipped with nothing - no food, water, or even clothing - except the video cameras he would use to document his time.

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of Edward Evan's South with Scott. Edward relates the details of Scott's fatal southern expedition, with special emphasis on those supporting the main push to the pole.

The North Pole, originally published in 1910, makes available Robert E. Peary's own account of his expedition in the Arctic. It provides hotly contested evidence that remains an indispensable key in deciding who deserved the coveted title "Discoverer of the North Pole". It is also a gripping adventure story that is impossible to put down.

For centuries, the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833, it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist, spy, one of the most respected scholars in Asia, and the greatest of nineteenth-century travelers.