This collection of true diving stories makes for compelling reading for all divers and would-be divers. Enjoy classic tales of this extreme watersport, from thrilling wreck discoveries to encounters with the bizarre and the beautiful. There are stories of death and disaster, as well as bravery and triumph. Tales of the exciting and the extreme rub shoulders with more poetic pieces about the people and places that make up the folklore of this fascinating sport. The author's global tour takes you everywhere, from Indonesia to the Caribbean and from the chill waters of Northern Europe to the reefs of the Pacific. Every ocean of the world is explored, making this essential reading - or a wonderful gift - for divers everywhere. This new edition sees the book return to hardback with a plate section of stunning colour photographs.

Fresh from finishing the Marathon des Sables, Ranulph Fiennes has become the oldest Briton to complete this ultimate endurance test. The world's greatest living explorer, has travelled to some of the most remote, dangerous parts of the globe. Well-known for his experiences at the poles and climbing Everest, he has also endured some of the hottest conditions on the planet, where temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees and, without water and shelter, death is inevitable.

Tom is an Asian puppy, destined to be dinner. Instead, an Irish couple rescue him from a street vendor and take him into their care. Together they embark on a whirlwind tour through Vietnam, Nepal and Cambodia, thwarting street dogs and customs officials along the way. But can the three of them truly become a family?

Winner of the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild Award for Excellence: Outdoor Book 2019 Chris Townsend embarks on a 700-mile walk along the spine of Scotland, the line of high ground where fallen rain runs either west to the Atlantic or east to the North Sea. Walking before the Independence Referendum of 2014, and writing after the EU Referendum of 2016, he reflects on: nature and history, conservation and rewilding, land use and literature, and change in a time of limitless potential for both better and worse.

Exploration has never been more popular and any idea that there is nowhere left to explore is instantly disproved by the contemporary explorers who are showcased here. Most of the accounts are written by the explorers themselves, and they all vividly describe challenging and extraordinary expeditions to some of the remotest parts of the world, in extremes of temperature and aridity, often alone and on the edge of danger. Some of these explorers are very experienced and are already celebrated worldwide, others are young and less well known and just starting to make their mark; all are driven by ambition, aspiration and passion. With 25 illustrations

In 1953 Hermann Buhl made the first ascent of Nanga Parbat - the ninth-highest mountain in the world, and the third 8,000-metre peak to be climbed, following Annapurna and Everest. It was one of the most incredible and committed climbs ever made. Continuing alone and without supplementary oxygen, Buhl made a dash for the summit after his partners turned back. On a mountain that had claimed thirty-one lives, an exhausted Buhl waded through deep snow and climbed over technical ground to reach the summit, driven on by an 'irresistible urge'. After a night spent standing on a small ledge at over 8,000 metres, Buhl returned forty-one hours later, exhausted and at the very limit of his endurance.Written shortly after Buhl's return from the mountain, Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage is a classic of mountaineering literature that has inspired thousands of climbers. It follows Buhl's inexorable rise from rock climber to alpinist to mountaineer, until, almost inevitably, he makes his phenomenal Nanga Parbat climb. Buhl's book, and ascent, reminded everyone that, while the mountains could never be conquered, they could be climbed with sufficient enthusiasm, spirit and dedication.

The life of Colonel Fawcett is now the subject of the major motion picture The Lost City of Z. The disappearance of Colonel Fawcett in the Matto Grosso remains one of the great unsolved mysteries. In 1925, Fawcett was convinced that he had discovered the location of a lost city; he had set out with two companions, one of whom was his eldest son, to destination 'Z', never to be heard of again. His younger son, Brian Fawcett, has compiled this book from letters and records left by his father, whose last written words to his wife were: 'You need have no fear of any failure . . .' This is the thrilling and mysterious account of Fawcett's ten years of travels in deadly jungles and forests in search of a secret city.

How does the human mind transform space into place, or land into landscape? For more than three decades, William L. Fox has looked at empty landscapes and the role of the arts to investigate the way humans make sense of space. In Terra Antarctica, Fox continues this line of inquiry as he travels to the Antarctic, the “largest and most extreme desert on earth.â€� This contemporary travel narrative interweaves artistic, cartographic, and scientific images with anecdotes from the author's three-month journey in the Antarctic to create an absorbing and readable narrative of the remote continent. Through its images, history, and firsthand experiences—snowmobile trips through whiteouts and his icy solo hikes past the edge of the mapped world—Fox brings to life a place that few have seen and offers us a look into both the nature of landscape and ourselves.

The extraordinary story of how the Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship, was found in the most hostile sea on Earth in 2022 On 21 November 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, finally succumbed to the crushing ice. Its crew watched in silence as the stern rose twenty feet in the air and then, it was gone. The miraculous escape and survival of all 28 men on board have entered legend. And yet, the iconic ship that bore them to the brink of the Antarctic was considered forever lost. A century later, an audacious plan to locate the ship was hatched. The Ship Beneath the Ice gives a blow-by-blow account of the two epic expeditions to find the Endurance. As with Shackleton's own story, the voyages were filled with intense drama and teamwork under pressure. In March 2022, the Endurance was finally found to headlines all over the world. Written by Mensun Bound, the Director of Exploration on both expeditions, this captivating narrative includes countless fascinating stories of Shackleton and his legendary ship. Complete with a selection of Frank Hurley's photos from Shackleton's original voyage in 1914-17, as well as from the expeditions in 2019 and 2022, The Ship Beneath the Ice is the perfect tribute to this monumental discovery.

Ernest Coleman has led or participated in four expeditions to find out the fate of the Franklin expedition. 129 men were lost from the two ships the Erebus and the Terror, looking for the North-West Passage. Many theories have been put forward - and some of them, in the author's opinion, have been shaped by political bias. 'The whole subject has been taken over by academics and politicians, both for questions of Canadian sovereignty and academic advancement - all at the cost of Franklin's (and the Royal Navy's) reputation.' In this work, Coleman is determined to set the record straight: 'I have provided answers to all their machinations (including the "lead poisoning" tripe, and the "cannibalism" nonsense), cracked the code in the writings of Petty Officer Peglar (bones found and wallet recovered), and given new answers to all the many smaller mysteries that continue to be reproduced by others. I have also revealed the possible site of Franklin's grave, the biggest mystery of all.' No Earthly Pole is an adventure set within an adventure. Ernest Coleman's lifetime quest for the truth at the ends of the earth is an extraordinary tale of determination in itself. The story of Franklin's expedition remains one of the greatest and most tragic events of the age of exploration.

In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C Port - launched a second-hand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay - with winter freeze-up on their heels. First published in 1935, "Canoeing with the Cree" is Sevareid's classic account of this youthful odyssey. The newspaper stories that Sevareid wrote on this trip launched his distinguished journalism career, which included more than a decade as a television correspondent and commentator on the CBS Evening News. It is now with a new foreword by Arctic explorer, Ann Bancroft.

Wine made in . . . China? Until recently, for most people, at best, it didn’t exist. Or at worst, as some wine writers complained in their tasting notes, it was reminiscent of “ash tray, coffee grounds, and urinal crust.� Then a 2009 Chinese red won Best Bordeaux Blend. Could China take over the wine world as well? Cynthia Howson and Pierre Li provide a knowledgeable and exuberant exploration of how Chinese wine went from being ignored and ridiculed to earning gold medals and praise by famous critics in less than a decade. They take the reader along on their adventure on the China wine trail to meet the farmers, entrepreneurs, and teachers who are shaping this new industry. They travel to Chinese wine tourism hotspots, talk to winemakers who struggle to find good wine grapes, and visit lush mountaintops and arid deserts to see what French multinational corporations have in common with small Chinese farmers. Then, they visit a Chinese wine school to meet professors and their students eager to join the wine workforce. They reveal where they bought the best local wines as they give travelers new insights on China and ideas for Chinese wine tourism. Readers interested in current affairs, economic development, and business in China will find that wine offers a clear lens for understanding the larger issues facing the country.

The Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1953-58 organised and led by Sir Vivian Fuchs and supported by Sir Edmund Hillary was one of the most extraordinary exploits ever undertaken in Antarctica - but it has been underappreciated. On the sixtieth anniversary of the crossing, this book tells the complete story of this remarkable episode in the history of exploration. The Crossing is illustrated with photographs from the Royal Geographical Society, with the kind permission of Mary Lowe, widow of expedition photographer George Lowe, and from Peter and Sarah Hillary and the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Sir Ernest Shackleton had tried unsuccessfully to cross the Antarctic in 1914. He called it the Last Great Journey, but he and his men escaped by the skin of their teeth. The new post-war expedition was therefore, with knowledge of what had gone before, a brave attempt to conquer the vast frozen continent. For this historic endeavour, planning had to be done at opposite ends of the Earth, in the UK and New Zealand, and members of the expedition were drawn from the Commonwealth. The plan was meticulous but flawed, and the stakes were high: national, political and scientific interests all depended on its success. John Knight's account shows how the expedition was organised, from the scientific insight it relied on, to the voyage to Antarctica and the choice of the largely mechanised transport intended to carry the men across the ice desert - though the courageous dog teams would be crucial as pathfinders. Survival at times was touch and go, and controversies arose amid the pressure of the journey. This book not only provides a technical insight into a ground-breaking venture but touches on the human aspects of the challenge. Crucially, did Ed Hillary exceed his remit by pushing on south, when his specific instructions were to establish depots for 'Bunny' Fuchs's journey, not to engage in a 'Second Race to the Pole'? The Crossing charts a unique event in postwar history.

"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.

On January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface. Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling, and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the flesh beneath. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizably skeletal, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, "Which one are you?" This thrilling and almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders. It is illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley's famous Antarctic photographs, many never before published in the United States.

At dusk on 24 September 1975, Doug Scott and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to reach the summit of Everest as lead climbers on Chris Bonington's epic expedition to the mountain's immense south-west face.As darkness fell, Scott and Haston scraped a small cave in the snow 100 metres below the summit and survived the highest bivouac ever - without bottled oxygen, sleeping bags and, as it turned out, frostbite. For Doug Scott, it was the fulfilment of a fortune-teller's prophecy given to his mother: that her eldest son would be in danger in a high place with the whole world watching.Scott and Haston returned home national heroes with their image splashed across the front pages. Scott went on to become one of Britain's greatest ever mountaineers, pioneering new climbs in the remotest corners of the globe. His career spans the golden age of British climbing from the 1960s boom in outdoor adventure to the new wave of lightweight alpinism throughout the 1970s and 1980s.In Up and About, the first volume of his autobiography, Scott tells his story from his birth in Nottingham during the darkest days of war to the summit of the world.Surviving the unplanned bivouac without oxygen near the summit of Everest widened the range of what and how he would climb in the future. In fact, Scott established more climbs on the high mountains of the world after his ascent of Everest than before. Those climbs will be covered in the second volume of his life and times.

My eyes lifted to the horizon and the unmistakable snowy outline of Everest. Everest, the mountain of my childhood dreams. A mountain that has haunted me my whole life. A mountain I have seen hundreds of times in photographs and films but never in real life. In April 2018, seasoned adventurer Ben Fogle and Olympic cycling gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, along with mountaineer Kenton Cool, took on their most exhausting challenge yet - climbing Everest for the British Red Cross to highlight the environmental challenges mountains face. It would be harrowing and exhilarating in equal measure as they walked the fine line between life and death 8,000 metres above sea level. For Ben, the seven-week expedition into the death zone was to become the adventure of a lifetime, as well as a humbling and enlightening journey. For his wife Marina, holding the family together at home, it was an agonising wait for news. Together, they dedicated the experience to their son, Willem Fogle, stillborn at eight months. Cradling little Willem to say goodbye, Ben and Marina made a promise to live brightly. To embrace every day. To always smile. To be positive and to inspire. And from the depths of their grief and dedication, Ben's Everest dream was born. Up, from here the only way was Up. Part memoir, part thrilling adventure, Ben and Marina's account of his ascent to the roof of the world is told with their signature humour and warmth, as well as with profound compassion.

Carl Lumholtz (1851 1922) was a Norwegian ethnographer and explorer who, soon after publishing an influential study of Australian Aborigines (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), spent five years researching native peoples in Mexico. This two-volume work, published in 1903, describes his expeditions to remote parts of north-west Mexico, inspired by reports about indigenous peoples who lived in cliff dwellings along mountainsides. While in the US in 1890 on a lecture tour, Lumholtz was able to raise sufficient funds for the expedition. He arrived in Mexico City that summer, and after meeting the president, Porfirio D az, he set off with a team of scientists for the Sierra Madre del Norte mountains in the north-west of Mexico, to find the cave-dwelling Tarahumare Indians. Volume 1 covers the start of the expedition and Tarahumare life, etiquette and beliefs, as well as details of the natural history of this little-explored region.

In November 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton watched horrified as the grinding ice floes of the Weddell Sea squeezed the life from his ship, Endurance. Caught in the chaos of splintered wood, buckled metalwork and tangled rigging lay Shackleton's dream of being the first man to complete the crossing of Antarctica. Shackleton would not live to make a second attempt - but his dream endured. Shackleton's Dream tells for the first time the story of the British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary. Forty years after the loss of Endurance, they set out to succeed where Shackleton had so heroically failed. Using tracked vehicles and converted farm tractors in place of Shackleton's man-hauled sledges, they faced a colossal challenge: a perilous 2,000-mile journey across the most demanding landscape on the planet. This epic adventure saw two giants of twentieth-century exploration pitted not only against Nature at her most hostile, but also against each other. Planned as a historic (and scientific) continental crossing, the expedition would eventually develop into a dramatic 'Race to the South Pole' - a contest as controversial as that of Scott and Amundsen more than four decades earlier.

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was perhaps the most ambitious, elaborate and confident of all the British attempts to master the South Pole. Like the others it ended in disaster, with the Endeavour first trapped and then crushed to pieces in the ice and its crew trapped in the Antarctic, seemingly doomed to a slow and horrible death. In the face of extraordinary odds, Shackleton, the expedition's leader, decided on the only course that might just save them: a 700 nautical mile voyage in a small boat across the ferocious Southern Ocean in the forelorn hope of reaching the only human habitation within range: a small whaling station on the rugged, ice-sheeted island of South Georgia. South tells the story both of the whole astonishing expedition and of Shackleton's journey to rescue his men - one of the greatest feats of navigation ever recorded.

The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this 10-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history."

In 1759 the botanist and scientist Vitaliano Donati led an expedition to Egypt under the patronage of King Carlo Emanuele III of Sardinia, to acquire Egyptian antiquities for the Museum in Turin. Charting his tumultuous expedition, this book reveals how, in spite of his untimely death in 1762, Donati managed to send enough items back to Turin to lay the foundations for one of the earliest and largest systematic collections of Egyptology in Europe, and help to bring the world of ancient Egypt into the consciousness of Enlightenment scholarship. Whilst the importance of this collection has long been recognised, its exact contents have been remained largely unknown. War, the Napoleonic occupation of Italy and the amalgamation and reorganisation of museum collections resulted in a dispersal of objects and loss of provenance. As a result it had been supposed that the actual contents of Donati's collection could not be known. However, the discovery by Angela Morecroft in 2004 of Donati's packing list reveals the exact quantity and type of objects that he acquired, offering the possibility to cross-reference his descriptions with unidentified artifacts at the Museum. By examining Donati's expedition to Egypt, and seeking to identify the objects he sent back to Turin, this book provides a fascinating insight into early collecting practice and the lasting historical impact of these items. As such it will prove a valuable resource for all those with an interest in the history of museums and collecting, as well as enlightenment travels to Egypt.