John Wesley Powell's 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers and through the Grand Canyon continues to be one of the most celebrated adventures in American history, ranking with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Apollo landings on the moon. For nearly twenty years Lago has researched the Powell expedition from new angles, traveled to thirteen states, and looked into archives and other sources no one else has searched. He has come up with many important new documents that change and expand our basic understanding of the expedition by looking into Powell's crewmembers, some of whom have been almost entirely ignored by Powell historians. Historians tended to assume that Powell was the whole story and that his crewmembers were irrelevant. More seriously, because several crew members made critical comments about Powell and his leadership, historians who admired Powell were eager to ignore and discredit them. Lago offers a feast of new and important material about the river trip, and it will significantly rewrite the story of Powell's famous expedition. This book is not only a major work on the Powell expedition, but on the history of American exploration of the West.

In the spring and summer of 1875, Lt. Col. Richard Irving Dodge escorted the scientific expedition of geologist Walter P. Jenney into the Black Hills of the Dakotas to determine the truth of rumors of gold started by Gen. George Armstrong Custer the previous summer. The five-month trek north from Cheyenne, Wyoming, challenged Dodge's 452 men with their wagons and animals, but in many respects it was ""a delightful picnic (without the ladies),"" as Dodge described it. Colonel Dodge wrote his journals daily in the field, and in their variety, discursiveness, and detail they convey clearly the pleasure he took in what he said was ""the most delightful summer of my life."" Yet he used only a small fraction of what he recorded in his subsequent official communications and published works. If it were not for this well-annotated and illustrated edition by Wayne R. Kime, readers would not have access to Dodge's experiences with such characters as the stowaway Calamity Jane or the eccentric mountain man and backwoods philosopher California Joe, who was hired to guide the expedition. Dodge's particular interests in hunting, fishing, and fine scenery also enliven his narrative, as do the politics dividing the miners from the Indians, and the soldiers from the scientists on the expedition. Black Hills Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge is by far the most detailed account yet available of the conflicting claims, interests, and populations that converged on the Black Hills during the key transitional period before the Great Sioux War of 1876.

Captain Woodfield made 20 seasonal voyages to the Antarctic on three research ships between 1955 and 1974. Starting as a Junior Deck Officer he worked for The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey which in 1964 became the British Antarctic Survey. He played a paramount role in the gradual change from using under-powered and poorly-equipped ships to the professionally-managed and sophisticated vessels of his last command. The arts of exploration and survival during his early years in this majestic but unforgiving continent are described as attempts were made to establish research stations, support science, and survey in totally uncharted, ice-filled waters amidst often ferocious weather. Dramatic stories are featured such as the near loss of a ship in pack ice, the stranding of another in hurricane force winds and the collapse of an ice-cliff onto the vessel The pioneers of Antarctic exploration, the area's history, the hardships and incredible achievements of those original seafarers are described.Yet polar navigation during the author's years was not without peril and the near loss in ice of his first ship, the RRS Shackleton, the demise of her Master, and his ill-judged replacement and consequent dramas are fully told.

In a book that has been called "a love song to nature," the author documents the latest decade of his explorations of the Baja peninsula and the Sea of Cortez. While much of the book narrates his experience as a writing professor taking undergraduates on sea kayak expeditions to the Isla Espiritu Santo archipelago each year during spring break, the book also reflects on experiences with a condor restoration project in the Sierra San Pedro Martir, and an altogether different teaching experience based in a field station on Bahia de los Angeles. While the author's intent is to evoke Baja ecologies in fresh ways, the reader comes to realize that he's also describing how education can become a transformational experience. A retired scuba instructor who turned to academics and went on to receive his college's highest teaching award, Dr. Farnsworth believes that education should be a lifelong adventure, and that explorations of the natural world should be animated by reverence and delight.

After a fifteen-year career as a sled dog racer, musher Dave Olesen turned his focus away from competition and set out to fulfill a lifelong dream. Over the course of four successive winters he steered his dogs and sled on long trips away from his remote Northwest Territories homestead, setting out in turn to the four cardinal compass points - south, east, north, and west - and home again to Hoarfrost River. His narrative ranges from the personal and poignant musings of a dogsled driver to loftier planes of introspection and contemplation. Olesen describes his journeys day by day, but this book is not merely an account of his travels. Neither is it yet another offering in the genre of ""wide-eyed southerner meets the Arctic,"" because Olesen is a firmly rooted northerner, having lived and travelled in the boreal outback for over thirty years. Olesen's life story colours his writing: educated immigrant, husband and father, professional dog musher, working bush pilot, and denizen of log cabins far off the grid. He and his dogs feel at home in country lying miles back of beyond. This book demolishes many of the cliches that imbue writings about bush life, the Far North, and dogsledding. It is a unique blend of armchair adventure, personal memoir, and thoughtful, down-to-earth reflection.

The history of Fort Phantom Hill is an interesting saga of defense, a story of both political necessity and individual hubris, and a tale of human perseverance and shortsightedness. The story of the "Post on the Brazos River" has all the elements that characterize human activity with its triumphs and tragedies, victories and defeats.
As time passed, circumstances dictated changing uses for the structures at Fort Phantom Hill, from military outpost to stage station to hunter's outpost. Eventually, opportunities for adaptation ran their course and the stone structures fell into neglect. The frontier was occupied by new immigrants who possessed a more modern technology. The threat of Indians was replaced by the hard daily work of living in a semi-desert environment.
In "Fort Phantom Hill: The Mysterious Ruins on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River," Bill Wright weaves the threads of this story into the larger warp and weft of western history and shows how this small fort was conceived, lived, and died as an important part of the "winning of the West."

In 2004 Carol Young set herself a challenge - walking in stages from Land's End to John O'Groats, on her own. For someone who had only once travelled away from home alone, it was quite a challenge, particularly as it meant leaving her husband and children for weeks at a time. The journey tested Carol's physical and mental strength, determination and her integrity, to say nothing of her understanding of maps, walking gear and survival skills. The experience proved rewarding and life changing. In over 1200 miles of plodding the lanes and tracks of the UK she met many fascinating people, whose kindness and generosity helped to make the task enjoyable. There were glimpses of rare wildlife, breathtaking scenery and several ordeals at the hands of wind, weather and water. In Search of Me is Carol's heart warming story, illustrated by many evocative photographs of her experience.

In 1842 John C. Fremont led a party of twenty-five men on a five-month journey from Saint Louis to the Wind River Range in the Rocky Mountains; his goal: to chart the best route to Oregon. In 1843 Fremont was commissioned for another expedition, to explore the Great Salt Lake, Washington, eastern California, Carson Pass, and the San Joaquin Valley, places that did not yet belong to the United States.

His journals from these expeditions, edited in collaboration with his wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, and published by Congress, thrilled the nation and firmly established Fremont's persona as the Great Pathfinder. Part descriptive survey, part rousing adventure story, Fremont's account was far more than a traveler's guide. His tales of courage and wit, descriptions of beautiful landscapes, and observations about Native Americans strengthened Americans' sense of a national identity and belief in Manifest Destiny. Still a fascinating page-turner today, Fremont's report documents the opening of the West even as it offers a firsthand look at the making of the American myth.

Anne F. Hyde provides an introduction to this signature American story that contextualizes the report, outlines Fremont's rise and fall, and shows how, for better or worse, this explorer exemplifies the nineteenth-century American spirit.

THE UNCONQUERED TELLS THE EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORY OF A JOURNEY INTO THE DEEPEST RECESSES OF THE AMAZON TO TRACK ONE OF THE PLANET'S LAST UNCONTACTED IN DIGENOUS TRIBES.
Even today there remain tribes in the far reaches of the Amazon rainforest that have avoided contact with modern civilization. Deliberately hiding from the outside world, they are the unconquered, the last survivors of an ancient culture that predates the arrival of Columbus in the New World. In this gripping first-person account of adventure and survival, author Scott Wallace chronicles an expedition into the Amazon's uncharted depths, discovering the rainforest's secrets while moving ever closer to a possible encounter with one such tribe--the mysterious "flecheiros, "or "People of the Arrow," seldom-glimpsed warriors known to repulse all intruders with showers of deadly arrows. On assignment for "National Geographic, "Wallace joins Brazilian explorer Sydney Possuelo at the head of a thirty-four-man team that ventures deep into the unknown in search of the tribe. Possuelo's mission is to protect the Arrow People. But the information he needs to do so can only be gleaned by entering a world of permanent twilight beneath the forest canopy.
Danger lurks at every step as the expedition seeks out the Arrow People even while trying to avoid them. Along the way, Wallace uncovers clues as to who the Arrow People might be, how they have managed to endure as one of the last unconquered tribes, and why so much about them must remain shrouded in mystery if they are to survive. Laced with lessons from anthropology and the Amazon's own convulsed history, and boasting a Conradian cast of unforgettable characters--all driven by a passion to preserve the wild, but also wracked by fear, suspicion, and the desperate need to make it home alive--"The Unconquered "reveals this critical battleground in the fight to save the planet as it has rarely been seen, wrapped in a page-turning tale of adventure.

"From the Hardcover edition."

In 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression, millionaire Charles Bedaux spent $250,000 in an attempt to cross northern British Columbia in five motorized vehicles. The Bedaux Expedition ranks as one of the most audacious and unusual events in the province's history. Bannock & Beans tells the story of this extravagant failure from the perspective of one of the cowboys who worked on Bedaux's team. Bob White's reminiscences, recounted in the tradition of the cowboy storyteller, describe the hardships of cutting trails and hauling supplies on horseback, the beauty of the wilderness landscape and many of the unique aspects of the expedition. Bannock and Beans also reveals the complex character of the expedition's leader, Charles Bedaux, a French entrepreneur who made his fortune in the United States. The book includes White's experiences in Bedaux's attempts to develop a ranch in northern BC after the expedition. Editor Jay Sherwood supplements with original Bedaux Expedition correspondence and photographs to show Bedaux's strong attachment to the remote wilderness area of northern BC from 1926 to 1939. Bannock and Beans provides new information and a fresh perspective on this unique event in BC's history. White's memoirs take us back to the campfire stories of people who were part of the vast wilderness that still covered much of the northern part of the province 75 years ago.

Robert Falcon Scott’s 1901–4 expedition to the Antarctic was a landmark event in the history of Antarctic exploration, creating a sensation comparable to the Arctic efforts of the American Robert E. Peary. Scott’s initial expedition was also the first step toward the dramatic race to the South Pole in 1912, which resulted in the tragic deaths of Scott and his companions. Since then Scott’s reputation has vacillated between two extremes: Was he a martyred hero, the beau ideal of a brave and selfless explorer, or a bumbling fool whose mistakes killed him and his entire party? Pilgrims on the Ice goes beyond the personality of Scott to remove the first expedition from the shadow of the second, to study objectively its purpose, its composition, and its real accomplishments. This Bison Books edition includes a new preface by the author.

David J. Peck's Or Perish in the Attempt ingeniously combines the remarkable adventures of Lewis and Clark with an examination of the health problems their expedition faced. Formidable problems indeed, but the author patiently, expertly-and humorously-guides us through the medical travails of the famous journey, juxtaposing treatment then against remedy now. The result is a fascinating book that sheds new light not only on Lewis and Clark and the men and one remarkable woman (and her infant) who accompanied them along an eight-thousand-mile wilderness path but also on the practice of medicine in their time and place.

Twenty-eight men stood on a desolate Antarctic ice floe one thousand miles from the nearest human contact. In a few months the ice would melt. To survive they would have to be safely on land before that happened-if they did not starve first. The odds were stacked against them. Facing all the horrors that the Antarctic could bring to bear, including numbing cold and the worst weather on the globe, they could freeze, starve, or drown. The single advantage they did have, however, proved decisive. They were led by Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922). This saga is their tale and that of the man who led them. T. H. Baughman is a professor of history at the University of Central Oklahoma and the author of several books, including Before the Heroes Came: Antarctica in the 1890s and Pilgrims on the Ice: Robert Falcon Scott's First Antarctic Expedition, both available in Bison Books editions.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SIR RANULPH FIENNES The Last Expedition is Captain Scott's gripping account of his expedition to the South Pole in 1910-12. It was meant to be a voyage of scientific discovery and a heroic exploration of the last unconquered wilderness. Scott's expedition, carried in the Terra Nova, pitted him and his team not only against the elements but also against the Norwegian explorer, Amundsen. Ultimately, Scott was beaten by both. The journals are full of incident and drama, courage and endurance, hope and bitter disappointment. These journals were found, along with Scott's body, several months after his death and just 11 miles from base camp and safety.

A journey - both historical and contemporary - among the fantastical landscapes, resourceful inhabitants and isolated tribes of the world's fourth-largest island of enduring fascination for its rich biodiversity: Madagascar.'A beautifully written depiction of the history of this beguiling island' Literary Review 'Courageous, exploratory, humane and with a wry sense of humour' Spectator 'A feat of journalism, observation and determination' Dr Alyson Hitch 'Wonderfully witty and wry' Benedict Allen We think we know Madagascar but it's too big, too eccentric, and too impenetrable to be truly understood. As well as visiting every corner of the island, John Gimlette journeys deep into Madagascar's past. Along the way, he meets politicians, sorcerers, gem prospectors, militiamen, rioters, lepers and the descendants of seventeenth-century pirates. Insightful and wryly humorous, here's an encounter with the people, landscapes, politics and history of one of the most remarkable places on Earth.

Two hundred and fifty years ago Captain James Cook, during his extraordinary voyages of navigation and maritime exploration, searched for Antarctica - the Unknown Southern Continent. During parts of his three voyages in the southern Pacific and Southern Oceans, Cook narrowed the options' for the location of Antarctica. Over three summers, he completed a circumnavigation of portions of the Southern Continent, encountering impenetrable barriers of ice, and he suggested the continent existed, a frozen land not populated by a living soul. Yet his Antarctic voyages are perhaps the least studied of all his remarkable travels. That is why James Hamilton's gripping and scholarly study, which brings together the stories of Cook's Antarctic journeys into a single volume, is such an original and timely addition to the literature on Cook and eighteenth-century exploration. Using Cook's journals and the log books of officers who sailed with him, the book sets his Antarctic explorations within the context of his historic voyages. The main focus is on the Second Voyage (1772-1775), but brief episodes in the First Voyage (during 1769) and the Third Voyage (1776) are part of the story. Throughout the narrative Cook's exceptional seamanship and navigational skills, and that of his crew, are displayed during often-difficult passages in foul weather across uncharted and inhospitable seas. Captain James Cook and the Search for Antarctica offers the reader a fascinating insight into Cook the seaman and explorer, and it will be essential reading for anyone who has a particular interest the history of the Southern Continent.

'A collection of intimate and heartfelt confessions of what love means, each with a wonderfully expressive colour portrait' Guardian 'Will restore your faith in the world' New York Post Award-winning journalist and documentary maker Stefania Rousselle had stopped believing in love. She had covered a series of bleak assignments, from terrorist attacks to the rise of the far right. Her relationship had fallen apart. Her faith in humanity was shaken. She decided to set out alone on a road trip across France, sleeping in strangers' homes, asking ordinary men and women the one question everyone wants to know the answer to: what is love? From a baker in Normandy to a shepherd in the Pyrenees, from a gay couple estranged from their families to a widow who found love again at 70, Amour is a treasure trove of poignant and profound stories about love, accompanied by beautiful photographs. 'Astonishing. Beautiful. Extraordinary. A couple of times I gasped and choked up. This was really worth reading' A Guardian reader response 'This is one of the best things I have read for a very long time. These wonderful stories really bring out what is important in life' A Guardian reader response 'Beautiful. Made me cry a little. Thank you for such honest, diverse and open stories' A Guardian reader response

In an adventure of a lifetime, Alexander Armstrong wraps up warm and heads ever north to explore the hostile Arctic winter - the glittering landscape of Scandinavia, the isolated islands of Iceland and Greenland, and the final frontier of Canada and Alaska. Along the way he learns from the Marines how to survive sub-zero temperatures by eating for England, takes a white-knuckle drive along a treacherous 800-mile road that's a river in summer and, with great reluctance, strips off for a dip in the freezing Arctic waters - and that's all before wrestling Viking-style with a sporting legend called Eva as part of an Icelandic winter festival. Sharing the wonder of the Arctic in his inimitable style, Land of the Midnight Sun is a brilliantly entertaining travelogue that takes readers on an exhilarating and hilarious journey to the farthest reaches of the globe. Through his witty exploration of the region's remarkable landscape and lifestyle, and its even more remarkable people, Armstrong proves himself the ideal travel companion.

"Conjures the rasp of the skin runner, the scent of burning blubber and the rippling iridescence of the Northern Lights..." Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica "Ritter manages to articulate all the terrible beauty and elemental power of a polar winter" Gavin Francis, author of Empire Antarctica In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to "read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content", but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realize that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive. At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies... But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic's harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for the sanctity of life. This rediscovered classic memoir tells the incredible tale of a woman defying society's expectations to find freedom and peace in the adventure of a lifetime.

Octogenarian Anthony Smith's journey was originally inspired by both the Kontiki Expedition of Thor Heyerdahl (who he knew) and the incredible story of the survivors of a 1940 boat disaster, who spent 70 days adrift in the Atlantic, eventually reaching land emaciated and close to death. While this might sound like a voyage no-one would wish to emulate, to octogenarian Anthony Smith it sounded like an adventure, and he placed a typically straightforward advertisement in the Telegraph that read "Fancy rafting across the Atlantic? Famous traveller requires 3 crew. Must be OAP. Serious adventurers only." In his inimitable style, Smith details their voyage and the hardships they endured with a matter-of-fact air that makes his story seem all the more impressive. His advanced age allows him a wider perspective not only on the journey but on life itself, and his never-say-die attitude to the difficulty of the journey is inspirational. 'Old men ought to be explorers' said T.S. Eliot, and this book certainly gives a compelling argument in his favour. It is both a great story (a huge storm on the final night of the voyage almost wrecked them on a reef) and a call to action for the older generation - do not go quietly, says Anthony Smith, but seek out adventure as long as you are able.

"GRIPPING. ... AN HOUR-BY-HOUR ACCOUNT." - WALL STREET JOURNAL * From one of the most decorated pilots in Air Force history comes a masterful account of Lindbergh's death-defying nonstop transatlantic flight in Spirit of St. Louis On the rainy morning of May 20, 1927, a little-known American pilot named Charles A. Lindbergh climbed into his single-engine monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis, and prepared to take off from a small airfield on Long Island, New York. Despite his inexperience-the twenty-five-year-old Lindbergh had never before flown over open water-he was determined to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize promised since 1919 to the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris, a terrifying adventure that had already claimed six men's lives. Ahead of him lay a 3,600-mile solo journey across the vast north Atlantic and into the unknown; his survival rested on his skill, courage, and an unassuming little aircraft with no front window. Only 500 people showed up to see him off. Thirty-three and a half hours later, a crowd of more than 100,000 mobbed Spirit as the audacious young American touched down in Paris, having acheived the seemingly impossible. Overnight, as he navigated by the stars through storms across the featureless ocean, news of his attempt had circled the globe, making him an international celebrity by the time he reached Europe. He returned to the United States a national hero, feted with ticker-tape parades that drew millions, bestowed every possible award from the Medal of Honor to Time's "Man of the Year" (the first to be so named), commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp within months, and celebrated as the embodiment of the twentieth century and America's place in it. Acclaimed aviation historian Dan Hampton's The Flight is a long-overdue, flyer's-eye narrative of Lindbergh's legendary journey. A decorated fighter pilot who flew more than 150 combat missions in an F-16 and made numerous transatlantic crossings, Hampton draws on his unique perspective to bring alive the danger, uncertainty, and heroic accomplishment of Lindbergh's crossing. Hampton's deeply researched telling also incorporates a trove of primary sources, including Lindbergh's own personal diary and writings, as well as family letters and untapped aviation archives that fill out this legendary story as never before.

"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised," wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard of his time with the 1910 Scott expedition to the South Pole. And that's how most of us still imagine polar expeditions: stolid men with ice riming their beards drawing sledges and risking death for scientific knowledge. But polar science has changed drastically over the past century - as Chris Linder shows us, brilliantly, with "Science on Ice". An oceanographer and award-winning photographer, Linder chronicles four polar expeditions in this richly illustrated volume: to a teeming colony of Adelie penguins, through the icy waters of the Bering Sea in spring, beneath the pack ice of the eastern Arctic Ocean, and over the lake - studded surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Each trip finds Linder teamed up with a prominent science journalist, and together their words and pictures reveal the day-to-day details of how science actually gets done at the poles. This title includes breathtaking images of the stark polar landscape that alternate with gritty, close-up shots of scientists working in the field, braving physical danger and brutal conditions, and working with remarkable technology designed to survive the poles - like robotic vehicles that chart undersea mountain ranges - as they gather crucial information about our planet's distant past, and the risks that climate change poses for its future. The result is a combination travel book and paean to the hard work and dedication that underlies our knowledge of life on earth. "Science on Ice" takes readers to the farthest reaches of our planet; science has rarely been more exciting - or inspiring.

From the author of INTO THE SILENCE, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction In 1941, Richard Evans Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard University and disappeared into the Northern Amazon of Colombia. The world's leading authority on the hallucinogens and medicinal plants of the region, he returned after twelve years of travelling through South America in a dug-out canoe, mapping uncharted rivers, living among local tribes and documenting the knowledge of shamans. Thirty years later, his student Wade Davis landed in Bogota to follow in his mentor's footsteps - so creating an epic tale of undaunted adventure, a compelling work of natural history and a testament to the spirit of scientific exploration.