Women Explorers

In 1922, a 16-year-old Canadian girl, fed up with life in a French convent school, answered an ad for a travelling secretary. Tall, blonde, and swaggering with confidence, she might have passed for twenty. She also knew what she wanted: to become the first female to drive around the world. Her name was Aloha Wanderwell. By the age of 25, she had become a pilot, a film star, an ambassador for world peace, and the centerpiece of one of the biggest unsolved murder mysteries in California history. Her story defied belief, but it was true. Every bit of it. Except for her name.

This audiobook tells the story of Amelia Earhart, the daring female aviator who disappeared while attempting to become the first woman to fly a plane around the world.

The image we have of Amelia Earhart today - a tousle-haired, androgynous flier clad in shirt, silk scarf, leather jacket, and goggles - is only one of her many personas, most of which have been lost to us through the years. Through years of research and interviews with many of the surviving people who knew Amelia, Susan Butler has recreated a remarkably vivid and multifaceted portrait of this enigmatic figure.

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.

Alison Wright covered human conflict with her camera until her own life was nearly cut short during a horrific bus accident with a logging truck on a remote jungle road in Laos. Suffering from excruciating life-threatening injuries, she drew upon her years of meditation practice, concentrating upon each breath, believing it to be her last.

On June 1, 1937, famous pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off in their small plane. Earhart’s goal was to make a record-breaking flight around the world. On the last part of the flight, they approached Howland Island to refuel. Before they could land, radio communication from Earhart stopped, and the plane disappeared. Search efforts turned up few clues. What happened to Earhart and Noonan? Explore the theories and learn why their disappearance has become one of history’s greatest mysteries.

The incredible true story of four ordinary working mums from Yorkshire who took on an extraordinary challenge and broke a world record along the way, proving it's never too late to go on a life-changing adventure, experience the beauty and power of the elements, push the very limits of your abilities and rediscover who you are.

Imagine giving up everything you own and walking across the country... for 28 years? Meet Peace Pilgrim, who crossed the U.S. on foot seven times with only the clothes on her back to spread her message of peace. From 1953 to 1981, she lived off the land and the kindness of those she met. Whenever trouble came her way - whether blizzards or black eyes - her sole response was love.

The Roman Forum, the Leaning Tower, the Piazza San Marco: these are the sights synonymous with Italy. But such landmarks only scratch the surface of this magical country's offerings. In See You in the Piazza, Frances Mayes introduces us to the Italy only the locals know, as she and her husband, Ed, eat and drink their way through all 20 regions - from Friuli to Sicily. Along the way, she seeks out the cultural and historic gems not found in traditional guidebooks.

Near the end of her life, Mary Mann Hamilton (1866-c.1936) was encouraged to record her experiences as a female pioneer. The result is the only known firsthand account of a remarkable woman thrust into the center of taming the American South - surviving floods, tornadoes, and fires; facing bears, panthers, and snakes; managing a boardinghouse in Arkansas that was home to an eccentric group of settlers; and running a logging camp in Mississippi that blazed a trail for development in the Mississippi Delta.

Amelia Earhart’s autobiographical book The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation covers Earhart’s life through May 20-21, 1932, “when Miss Earhart, alone in a Lockheed Vega monoplane with a single Wasp engine, negotiated 2,026 miles through storm and fog from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to a cow pasture on the outskirts of Londonderry, Ireland. The flight set a transatlantic record of 14 hours, 56 minutes...and stirred such public adulation that she confided, ‘I’ll be glad when the zoo part is over.’” (ANB)

In 1921, Inupait seamstress Ada Blackjack joined a a group of four white men who wanted to establish a trading post on Wrangel Island in the freezing Arctic Ocean. The explorers were stranded on the island when their return ship was forced to turn back due to ice. Facing harsh conditions and dwindling food supplies, the men died one by one, but Ada remained. Find out how she alone managed to survive the disastrous expedition.

Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, best-selling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

Leslie White knew she wanted more out of life - She found it in an unlikely place. Devastated from the loss of both parents to cancer nine months apart, Leslie vowed to change her life. She bought the neighbor’s old motorhome, found a job as a traveling histologist, and hit the road. But she found she could not trust the one person she was still holding onto.

Jackie was an ordinary American woman whose life changed after a blind date with rugged Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne. After marrying, they began planning the 1946-1948 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. Her participation was not welcomed by the expedition team of red-blooded males eager to prove themselves in the frozen, hostile environment of Antarctica.

For swimming champion Nancy Stearns Bercaw, the pool was a natural habitat. But on land, she could never shake the feeling of being a fish out of water. Starting at age two, Nancy devoted her life to swimming, even qualifying for the 1988 Olympic Trials in the fifty-meter freestyle event. But nearly two decades later, when she hung up her cap and goggles, she was confronted with a different kind of challenge: learning who she was out of the lanes.

Stephanie White, from Charlotte NC, made up her mind to tackle the three individual 200-mile distance races known as the Triple Crown of 200’s. This includes the Bigfoot 205 mile race, Tahoe 200 mile race, and the Moab 240 mile race. While trying to figure out how to train for these races, she decided to do a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail and learned so much about herself and life, in general, along the way.

Amelia Earhart flew solo over the Atlantic, afterward receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross, and began championing the efforts of women to explore careers traditionally held by men. Tragically, just days before her 40th birthday, her plane vanished en route to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean as she neared the end of her round-the-world journey. After an exhaustive search, no trace of the plane or Amelia was ever found.

Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness to her rightful place along with Sacajawea, Nellie Bly, and Amelia Earhart as one of the great woman adventurers of all time.

Li Juan and her mother own a small convenience store in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, where she writes about her life among grasslands and snowy peaks. To her neighbors' surprise, Li decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their 30 boisterous camels, 500 sheep, and over 100 cattle and horses to pasture for the winter.