Explorer Memoirs

In 1930, Edward Beauclerk Maurice, a shy 16-year-old, decided to pursue an uncertain future as an apprentice fur trader among the Eskimos. With no telephone, no radio communication and only one annual visit from the supply ship, he found life in Baffin Land isolated and harsh. The Innuit taught him to build igloos, hunt polar bears and survive the arctic winter. He became fascinated with the myths and folklore that underpinned this remote culture and formed close friendships.

In February 2019, award-winning writer Alex Roddie left his online life behind when he set out to walk 300 miles through the Scottish Highlands, seeking solitude and answers. In leaving the chaos of the internet behind for a month, he hoped to learn how it was truly affecting him - or if he should look elsewhere for the causes of his anxiety. The Farthest Shore is the story of Alex’s solo trek along the remote Cape Wrath Trail.

When Forrest Fenn was given a fatal cancer diagnosis, he came up with a bold plan: He would hide a chest full of jewels and gold in the wilderness, and publish a poem that would serve as a map leading to the treasure's secret location. But he didn't die, and after hiding the treasure in 2010, Fenn instead presided over a decade-long gold rush that saw many thousands of treasure hunters scrambling across the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of his fortune.

Once a person hikes a long trail, they catch the bug, but does it get any easier the second time around? Four years after starting the Appalachian Trail with his brother, Brian takes to the Continental Divide Trail for his second thru-hike in familiar company. However, trail life is not always as rewarding and romantic as the pictures you see or second-hand stories you hear.

Two stories about William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army; two stories about amazing women aviators; and two true-to-life adventures!

A restless child of the 1960s, Marilyn yearns for love, hippiedom, and escape from her controlling mother. At fourteen, she runs nearly a thousand miles away to Vancouver, British Columbia, eventually landing herself in a Catholic home for troubled girls. At sixteen, she’s emancipated, navigating adulthood without a high school diploma, and craving a soulmate. When she falls in love with Jack, the grad student living next door, life finally seems perfect. The two embark on a cross-continental bicycle trip, headed for South America, but before they reach Mexico, tragedy strikes.

Few American icons provoke more enduring fascination than Charles Lindbergh - renowned for his one-man transatlantic flight in 1927, remembered for the sorrow surrounding the kidnapping and death of his firstborn son in 1932, and reviled by many for his opposition to America's entry into World War II.

Captain Kidd was one of the most notorious pirates to ever prowl the seas. But few know that Kidd had an accomplice, a behind-the-scenes player who enabled his plundering and helped him outpace his enemies. That accomplice was his wife, Sarah Kidd, a well-to-do woman whose extraordinary life is a lesson in reinvention and resourcefulness. Twice widowed by twenty-one and operating within the strictures of polite society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York, Sarah secretly aided and abetted her husband, fighting alongside him against his accusers.

Taking risks and exploring the unknown are as vital to human beings as our need for air, for growth, for affirmation, for something. These 19 stories reach deep into humanity's compulsion for the rush of new experiences.

If you ever wondered what crazy things other people get up to, here's a good place to start your research. Featuring: why you should never ask me to play the drums, half way around the world on a 250cc Jawa, across the Sahara and through darkest Africa with two friends on their honeymoon—in a nine-year-old Morris Isis with four inches of ground clearance, running on bald tires picked from trash dumps around London, and more.

In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere—of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These cities were the sources of endless comfort and escape, and of a lasting fascination. Streets unspooled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled in the places where Mark hoped he could someday be anyone—perhaps even himself.

A tale of adventures, as Lin and Larry Pardey continue their voyaging on board their self-built 24'4" cutter. They cross the exotic sea that spawned Homer's tales of Ulysses' Odyssey, then sail through the strife torn Red Sea and across the typhoon tossed waters of the Bay of Bengal.

Back again with even more "mostly true" tales from the trail, Lawton Grinter's new book I Hike Again is sure to find a place in every adventurer's library! I Hike Again imparts hard-earned wisdom from trails both in the United States (Arizona Trail, Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Grand Enchantment Trail, Wind River High Route) and abroad (Spain's GR11 and New Zealand's Te Araroa).

In 1849 Heinrich Barth joined a small British expedition into unexplored regions of Islamic North and Central Africa. One by one his companions died, but he carried on alone, eventually reaching the fabled city of gold, Timbuktu. His five-and-a-half-year, 10,000-mile adventure ranks among the greatest journeys in the annals of exploration, and his discoveries are considered indispensable by modern scholars of Africa.

Der Tibetkenner Heinrich Harrer lebte als einziger Europäer am tibetanischen Königshof und wurde zum engem Vertrauten des Dalai Lama. Übersetzungen in mehr als vierzig Sprachen und Auflagen in Millionenhöhe ließen seine Erinnerungen zu einem Weltbestseller werden. Fünfzig Jahre nach der spektakulären Flucht Heinrich Harrers über den Hinmalaja nach Tibet kam das Abenteuer des Jahrhunderts in der Verfilmung von Jean-Jacques Annaud mit Brad Pitt in der Hauptrolle in die Kinos.

Gertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the 20th century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today's Middle East.

Simon McCartney was a young British alpinist climbing many of the hardest routes in the Alps during the late seventies, but it was a chance meeting in Chamonix in 1977 with Californian "Stonemaster" Jack Roberts that would dramatically change both their lives - and almost end Simon’s...The Bond is Simon McCartney’s story of these legendary climbs.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States accelerated the development of technologies that would give it an advantage over the Soviet Union. Airpower, combined with nuclear weapons, offered a formidable check on Soviet aggression. In 1947, the United States Air Force was established. Meanwhile, scientists and engineers were pioneering a revolutionary new type of aircraft which could do what no other machine had ever done: reach mach 1 - a speed faster than the movement of sound - which pilots called "the demon."

This is the true story of a pregnant teenager who assumed command of an American merchant sailing ship in 1856. She faced off a mutiny, braved gale-force winds and icebergs, and then navigated the ship to port. Her name was Mary Patten.

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.