Cook was the greatest explorer of his age and his voyages of discovery are the stuff of legend. During two long journeys, he circumnavigated the globe twice, charted the east coast of Australia, the whole of New Zealand and many islands in the Pacific. "The Fatal Voyage" is the story of Cook's final journey when he led his most dangerous and fabled expedition to search for the elusive Pacific entrance to the North West Passage. He set sail from England in July 1776 and along the way discovered the Hawaiian archipelago before mapping and charting the formidable north west coast of America, from Vancouver Island to the frozen northern coastline of Alaska. He sailed through the Bering Straits and although his ships reached the entrance to the North West Passage they were defeated by a sheer wall of ice blocking their way. Cook returned to Hawaii to rest, but a series of misjudgments between his men and the islanders sparked a violent clash in which Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay. Peter Aughton has here used letters, log records and the diaries of those involved in the voyage to tell an enthralling account of James Cook's last days at sea and reveal the extraordinary legacy he left behind.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers - and fortune hunters - than the lost city of Timbuktu. Africa's legendary City of Gold, not visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages, held the promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale. Unwilling to trust in the slender chances of a lone explorer, the British sent several on their way. "The Race for Timbuktu" follows Major Alexander Gordon Laing's arduous trek across an unforgiving Sahara, battling unpredictable elements, crippling illness, vicious attacks - and the clock - to be the first white man in centuries to reach the gates of Timbuktu. In bringing Laing's dramatic story to life, Frank T. Kryza also provides a narrative history of the first phase of the colonization of Africa, which in less than a century would see nearly every square mile of the continent occupied by the nations of Europe.

In 1700, a young man named John Lawson left London and landed in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to make a name for himself. For reasons unknown, he soon undertook a two-month journey through the still-mysterious Carolina backcountry. His travels yielded A New Voyage to Carolina in 1709, one of the most significant early American travel narratives, rich with observations about the region's environment and Indigenous people. Lawson later helped found North Carolina's first two cities, Bath and New Bern; became the colonial surveyor general; contributed specimens to what is now the British Museum; and was killed as the first casualty of the Tuscarora War. Yet despite his great contributions and remarkable history, Lawson is little remembered, even in the Carolinas he documented. In 2014, Scott Huler made a surprising decision: to leave home and family for his own journey by foot and canoe, faithfully retracing Lawson's route through the Carolinas. This is the chronicle of that unlikely voyage, revealing what it's like to rediscover your own home. Combining a traveler's curiosity, a naturalist's keen observation, and a writer's wit, Huler draws our attention to people and places we might pass regularly but never really see. What he finds are surprising parallels between Lawson's time and our own, with the locals and their world poised along a knife-edge of change between a past they can't forget and a future they can't quite envision.

The Last Overland is the story behind the four-part documentary series on All 4 - the extraordinary journey of filmmaker Alex Bescoby and his team across 13,000 miles to recreate the legendary overlanding expedition of 1956. In 1955, a young TV producer named David Attenborough was approached by six recent graduates from Oxford and Cambridge universities determined to drive the entire length of Eurasia, as it was then known, from London to Singapore. It was the 'unclimbed Everest of motoring' - many had tried, none had succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave The Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition enough film reel to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team was told in Attenborough's Travellers' Tales, and captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim's book, The First Overland, was published shortly after and soon became the Bible of the overlanding religion. Inspired by Attenborough's comment fifty years on that it was a journey 'that I don't think could be made again today', Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. With their improbable team and the prospect of getting the original 'Oxford' - arguably the world's most famous Land Rover - home to London, their goal was to complete the heroic journey started more than sixty years earlier. In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather's deterioration due to tragedy and then dementia, Alex soon finds himself on the defining trip of his lifetime and discovers how the world has changed for better, and for worse, since the First Overland.

"Zambesi" tells the story of David Livingstone's Zambesi Expedition. It exposes the rivalry among some of Victorian Britain's leading establishment figures and institutions - including the Foreign Office, the Royal Society, Royal Geographical Society, British Museum, Kew Gardens and the Admiralty - as abolitionists, scientists, and entrepreneurs sought to promote and protect their differing interests. Making use of letters, documents and materials neglected by previous writers and researchers, the author reveals how tensions arose from the very beginning between those in pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and the proponents of the civilizing missions who saw scientific knowledge as the utilitarian means to a social end. The result is an exciting story involving one of England's most feted Victorian heroes that offers important new insights in the practice and politics of expeditionary science in Victorian England. This is the definitive account of the expedition to date.

In the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, an unprecedented number of Indigenous people - especially Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, and Cree - travelled to Britain and other parts of the world. Who were these transatlantic travellers, where were they going, and what were they hoping to find? Travellers through Empire unearths the stories of Indigenous peoples including Mississauga Methodist missionary and Ojibwa chief Reverend Peter Jones, the Scots-Cherokee officer and interpreter John Norton, Catherine Sutton, a Mississauga woman who advocated for her people with Queen Victoria, E. Pauline Johnson, the Mohawk poet and performer, and many others. Cecilia Morgan retraces their voyages from Ontario and the northwest fur trade and details their efforts overseas, which included political negotiations with the Crown, raising funds for missionary work, receiving an education, giving readings and performances, and teaching international audiences about Indigenous cultures. As they travelled, these remarkable individuals forged new families and friendships and left behind newspaper interviews, travelogues, letters, and diaries that provide insights into their cross-cultural encounters. Chronicling the emotional ties, contexts, and desires for agency, resistance, and negotiation that determined their diverse experiences, Travellers through Empire provides surprising vantage points on First Nations travels and representations in the heart of the British Empire.

A bestselling scientist and nature writer who goes to any extreme to uncover the answers, Bill Streever sets off to find out what heat really means. Let him be your guide and you'll firewalk across hot coals and sweat it out in Death Valley, experience intense fever and fire, learn about the invention of matches and the chemistry of cooking, drink crude oil, and explore thermonuclear weapons and the hottest moment of all time-the big bang. Melting glaciers, warming oceans, forest fires, droughts-it's clear that today's world is getting hotter. But while we know the agony of a sunburn or the comfort of our winter heaters, do we really understand heat? Written in Streever's signature spare and refreshing prose, HEAT is an a compulsively readable personal narrative that leaves readers with a new vision of an everyday experience-how heat works, its history, and its complete connection to daily life.

In the nineteenth century, Jules Verne imagined a journey round the world. At the start of the twentieth century, an American millionaire, Charles J. Glidden, did it for real - though it took many more than eighty days. Assisted by Charles Thomas, a Sussex engineer, the millionaire took his Napier car twice around the world, to places that had never seen a powered vehicle. The journeys took them across thirty-nine countries on four continents. In Switzerland they were arrested for driving on a forbidden road. Later they fitted the car with railroad wheels and drove to Vancouver on the tracks of the Canadian Pacific. During their travels they met people of all kinds, from impoverished pilgrims to maharajahs. In Fiji there was an encounter with the last cannibal; in militarist Japan they experienced anti-Western attitudes. Andrew Jepson tells the fascinating story of these ground-breaking journeys with the aid of images taken from Charles Thomas' own photograph albums. This is a must-read for all motoring enthusiasts.

In April 2011, four soldiers - each a veteran of recent conflicts, who suffered devastating injuries in the line of duty - set out on an extraordinary challenge: a two-hundred mile trek, unsupported, to the North Pole. Joined by patron Prince Harry, the charity founders, a polar guide and a film crew, the team achieved their goal despite facing hurdles an able-bodied athlete would baulk at, and having seen their resilience tested to the limit. They returned with a story that proves strength of mind can be every bit as powerful as strength of body, and as an inspiration to us all.

Listen to a short interview with Tom Griffiths Host: Chris Gondek - Producer: Heron & Crane

From Scott and Shackleton to sled dogs and penguins, stories of Antarctica seize our imagination. In December 2002, environmental historian Tom Griffiths set sail with the Australian Antarctic Division to deliver the new team of winterers. In this beautifully written book, Griffiths reflects on the history of human experiences in Antarctica, taking the reader on a journey of discovery, exploration, and adventure in an unforgettable land.

He weaves together meditations on shipboard life during his three-week voyage with fascinating forays into the history and nature of Antarctica. He brings alive the great age of sail in the initiation of travelers to the great winds of the "roaring forties." No continent is more ruled by wind, and Griffiths explains why Antarctica is a barometer of global climatic health. He charts the race to the South Pole, from its inception as part of the drive to map Earth's magnetism, to the reasons for Robert Scott's tragic death. He also offers vivid descriptions of life in Antarctica, such as the experience of a polar night, the importance of food for morale, and coping with solitude.

A charming narrative and an informative history, "Slicing the Silence" is an intimate portrait of the last true wilderness.

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."

North of the sixtieth parallel, the sun shines for less than six hours in the winter, and towering mountains are the only skyscrapers. Pristine waters serve caribou, moose, and bears in an unbroken landscape. At any given moment in this spectacular scenery, there's a chance that Jonathan Waterman is present, trekking across the land. A masterful adventurer, Waterman has spent decades exploring the farthest reaches of our beautiful spaces. The essays and photographs collected in "Northern Exposures" are a product of this passion for exploration and offer an unparalleled view into adventuring in the north and beyond. Picking up after "In the Shadow of Denali", his first book of essays, "Northern Exposures" collects twenty-three stories from Waterman's thirty-year career that show the evolution of the adventurer's work, from ducking avalanches near the Gulf of Alaska to searching for the most pristine tundra on the continent, and from writing haiku on Denali in the depth of winter to decrying oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Ninety-six spectacular photographs taken by Waterman during his expeditions lend a broader context and allow readers to fully understand his heartfelt argument for protecting these places. Whether active, aspiring, or just armchair adventurers, readers will be inspired by Waterman's daring spirit.