Explorer Memoirs

Admired by millions as the star of Man vs. Wild and the acclaimed NGC series Running Wild, global adventurer Bear Grylls has explored places few would dare to go. Now, he shares time-honored lessons for leading an adventurous life through stories drawn from his personal experiences, as well as encounters with a diverse group of celebrities who have participated in his wildly popular television shows.

In Pole to Pole we join Michael Palin on the second of his epic challenges. Travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole, he experiences every extreme the globe has to offer. As he crosses 16 countries by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon and bicycle, he meets a diverse range of fascinating characters and landscapes while his own endurance is tested to the limit. With his customary aplomb, he plunges himself into the local cultures, starring in a crayfish documentary in Novgorod, attending a baby-rolling ceremony at a Cypriot wedding, and consulting an Mpulugu witch-doctor.

It is the last decade of the 19th century. The Wild West has been tamed and its fierce, independent and often violent larger-than-life figures – gun-toting wanderers, trappers, prospectors, Indian fighters, cowboys, and lawmen –are now victims of their own success. They are heroes who’ve outlived their usefulness.

Jacques Cartier prépare minutieusement son premier voyage. Comme il est soutenu par le roi de France, il parvient à lever son équipage. Le 20 avril 1534, il assiste à la messe et au sortir de l’église, toute la ville l’accompagne sur les quais. La foule en liesse veut assister au départ de ce grand personnage auquel rien ne résiste. Il appareille avec deux navires ornés du drapeau fleurdelisé, symbole de la royauté. C’est le départ pour la grande aventure. En moins de trois semaines d’une traversée assez tranquille, Jacques Cartier passe au large de Terre-Neuve.

Audrey Lessard est née dans la petite ville minière de Thetford Mines en mai 1982. Elle y a grandi auprès de ses amis, ses cousins et sa famille. Une particularité : Audrey est née sourde. Elle n’est pas malentendante mais bel et bien sourde. Elle n’entend rien de rien ! Pourtant ses amis, pour la plupart, sont des personnes entendantes. Et depuis l'enfance jusqu’à ce jour, tous communiquent sans problème avec Audrey.

Aron Ralston, an experienced twenty-seven-year-old outdoorsman, was on a days solitary hike through a remote and narrow Utah canyon when he dislodged an eight-hundred- pound boulder that crushed his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall. Emerging from the searing pain, Aron found himself completely stuck. No one knew where he was; no one was coming to rescue him. With scant water and food, and a cheap pocketknife his only tool, he eliminated his options one by one.

After travelling the whole world, can exploring a single map ever be enough? Adventurer Alastair Humphreys spends a year investigating the small map around his own home. Can this unassuming landscape, marked by the glow of city lights and the hum of busy roads, satisfy his wanderlust? Could a single map provide a lifetime of exploration?

Vaincre, au plein cœur de l'hiver et sans oxygène, le Nanga Parbat, cette montagne tueuse, immense pyramide de gneiss cuirassée de glace qui culmine au Pakistan à 8 125 mètres, c'est l'exploit qu'ont réalisé le 25 janvier 2018 Élisabeth Revol et son compagnon de cordée Tomasz Mackiewicz.

Au début des années soixante, Thompson, alors journaliste à San Francisco, est fasciné par les Hell's Angels. Son article sur ces seigneurs de la route fait sensation, il se lance dans la version longue : un an passé à rouler et à écrire à leurs côtés. Mais l'équipée se termine sauvagement : parce qu'il refuse de partager ses royalties, les Angels abandonnent l'homme de lettres sur une route, à moitié mort et le crâne défoncé à coups de pierres.

Endeavour is the story of a ship, an idea, and a way of looking at the world. It is grounded in the Enlightenment, an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a collier - a commonplace coal-carrying vessel - made of oak, bought by the Royal Navy in 1768. No one could have guessed it would go on to become the most significant ship in the chronicle of British exploration. Endeavour also had a role in American history, witnessing the bloody birth of the republic.

Cincuenta años después de la tragedia de los Andes, los sobrevivientes narran cómo lograron superar lo insuperable. El 13 de octubre de 1972 un avión de la Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya se estrelló en la cordillera de los Andes. Iban a bordo cuarenta y cinco personas, dieciséis de las cuales fallecieron en el acto o pocas horas después. Con alrededor de veinte años, a cuatro mil metros de altura y treinta grados bajo cero, sin abrigo ni comida, la relación entre víctimas y sobrevivientes se invirtió y solo regresaron con vida dieciséis.

Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say.

When we remember the Second World War in the air, we think of fighter pilots and bomber crews. But what was it like for the men and women working as ground crew and in the aircraft factories who also played a crucial role in defeating Hitler? What was it like making history? What sense did these individuals have of what they were doing, either at the time or later? Did they feel they were caught up in the tide of great events? Or were they simply doing their demanding and often dangerous duty?

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.

In this extraordinarily rare memoir by an active-duty jumper, Jason Ramos takes listeners into his exhilarating and dangerous world, explores smokejumping's remarkable history, and explains why their services are more essential than ever before.

In 1519 Magellan and his fleet of five ships set sail from Seville, Spain, to discover a water route to the fabled Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities (cloves, pepper, and nutmeg) flourished. Three years later, a handful of survivors returned with an abundance of spices from their intended destination, but with just one ship carrying 18 emaciated men. During their remarkable voyage around the world the crew endured starvation, disease, mutiny, and torture. Many men died, including Magellan, who was violently killed in a fierce battle.

Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of a world that, like the self and like the stars, can never be fully mapped.

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan. When Captain John Smith was captured by these Indians in 1607, he was brought before Powhatan, who sentenced him to death. Sixteen-year-old Pocahontas convinced her father to spare Captain Smith's life, thus becoming a friend of the settlers and eventually influencing her father to be friendly, too.

On May 15, 2010, after 210 days at sea and more than 22,000 nautical miles, 16-year-old Jessica Watson sailed her 33-foot boat triumphantly back to land. She had done it. She was the youngest person to sail solo, unassisted, and nonstop around the world. Jessica spent years preparing for this moment, years focused on achieving her dream. Yet only eight months before, she collided with a 63,000-ton freighter. It seemed to many that she’d failed before she’d even begun, but Jessica brushed herself off, held her head high, and kept going.

From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history.