This is an eminent polar scientist's account of six expeditions to the 'frozen continent' while working with the US Antarctic Program. The book combines first-person narrative and outstanding photography to record the events, the feelings, the results, and the memories of conducting research in one of Earth's most remote and hostile environments. This book is not just about science, but about adventures in the pursuit of science.

"Geography and Enlightenment" explores both the Enlightenment as a geographical phenomenon and the place of geography in the Enlightenment. From wide-ranging disciplinary and topical perspectives, contributors consider the many ways in which the world of the long eighteenth century was brought to view and shaped through map and text, exploration and argument, within and across spatial and intellectual borders.
The first set of chapters charts the intellectual and geographical contexts in which Enlightenment ideas began to form, including both the sites in which knowledge was created and discussed and the different means used to investigate the globe. Detailed explorations of maps created during this period show how these new ways of representing the world and its peoples influenced conceptions of the nature and progress of human societies, while studies of the travels of people and ideas reveal the influence of far-flung places on Enlightenment science and scientific credibility. The final set of chapters emphasizes the role of particular local contexts in Enlightenment thought.
Contributors are Michael T. Bravo, Paul Carter, Denis Cosgrove, Stephen Daniels, Matthew Edney, Anne Marie Claire Godlewska, Peter Gould, Michael Heffernan, David N. Livingstone, Dorinda Outram, Chris Philo, Roy Porter, Nicolaas Rupke, Susanne Seymour, Charles Watkins, and Charles W. J. Withers.

"WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!" In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. With The Best Land Under Heaven, Wallis has penned what critics agree is "destined to become the standard account" (Washington Post) of the notorious saga. Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the "expert storyteller" (True West) compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. Interweaving information from hundreds of newly uncovered documents, Wallis illuminates how a combination of greed and recklessness led to one of America's most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes. The result is a "fascinating, horrifying, and inspiring" (Oklahoman) examination of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny.

Selected by Robin Hanbury-Tenison, described by the Sunday Times as the 'greatest explorer of the last twenty years', this is a comprehensive anthology of the writings of explorers through the ages, now fully revised and updated. The ultimate in travel writing, these are the words of those who changed the world through their pioneering search for new lands, new peoples, and new experiences.
Divided into geographical sections, the book takes us to Asia with Vasco da Gama, Francis Younghusband, and Wilfred Thesiger, to the Americas with John Cabot, Sir Francis Drake, and Alexander Von Humboldt, to Africa with Dr David Livingstone and Mary Kingsley, to the Pacific with Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook, and to the Poles with Robert Peary and Wally Herbert. Driven by a desire to discover that transcends all other considerations, the vivid writings of these extraordinary people reveal what makes them go beyond the possible and earn the right to be known as

In America's early national period, Meriwether Lewis was a towering figure. Selected by Thomas Jefferson to lead the expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase, he was later rewarded by Jefferson with the governorship of the entire Louisiana Territory. Yet within three years, plagued by controversy over administrative expenses, Lewis found his reputation and career in tatters. En route to Washington to clear his name, he died mysteriously in a crude cabin on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Was he a suicide, felled by his own alcoholism and mental instability? Most historians have agreed. Patricia Tyson Stroud reads the evidence to posit another, even darker, ending for Lewis. Stroud uses Lewis's find, the bitterroot flower, with its nauseously pungent root, as a symbol for his reputation as a purported suicide. It was this reputation that Thomas Jefferson promulgated in the memoir he wrote prefacing the short account of Lewis's historic expedition published five years after his death. Without investigation of any kind, Jefferson, Lewis's mentor from boyhood, reiterated undocumented assertions of Lewis's serious depression and alcoholism. That Lewis was the courageous leader of the first expedition to explore the continent from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean has been overshadowed by presuppositions about the nature of his death. Stroud peels away the layers of misinformation and gossip that have obscured Lewis's rightful reputation. Through a retelling of his life, from his resourceful youth to the brilliance of his leadership and accomplishments as a man, Bitterroot shows that Jefferson's mystifying assertion about the death of his protege is the long-held bitter root of the Meriwether Lewis story.

'...In this year celebrating the centenary of the conquering of the South Pole - it is more than fitting to have one of the unregarded figures of Antarctic history brought into the limelight of remembrance'. Extract from Introduction by Dr. Ross D.E. MacPhee, American Museum of Natural History As senior surgeon on board Discovery, Dr. Reginald Koettlitz played a vital role in the heroic period of polar exploration when Nansen, Amundsen, Shackleton and Scott dominated the headlines. He was awarded a medal by the Royal Geographical Society for his role in the Discovery Expedition, 1901-04. During the earlier successful three-year Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition to Franz Josef Land, Koettlitz fine-tuned his measures to prevent scurvy, became an experienced ski runner, dog and pony handler and expert in polar survival. These skills were available when Koettlitz was appointed senior surgeon on the Discovery Expedition led by Scott, but due to personal reasons and the inability to acknowledge Koettlitz's polar experience, both Scott's expeditions were beset by major life-threatening issues that Koettlitz had faced and resolved on Franz Josef Land. On the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition Scott and his four companions died on their failed attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. In addition, Koettlitz travelled across north-east Africa from Berbera to Cairo on foot, mule and camel, crossing the Blue Nile to Khartoum shortly after the Battle of Omdurman. Before leaving for South Africa he assisted Shackleton in planning the Nimrod Expedition which almost resulted in the South Pole being reached. This well-researched account is enriched with previously unseen archive material such as correspondence with Nansen and photographs relating to polar history during the period 1890-1916.

The famous geological research ship Glomar Challenger was a radically new instrument that revolutionized earth science in the same sense that the cyclotron revolutionized nuclear physics, and its deep-sea drilling voyages, conducted from 1968 through 1983, were some of the great scientific adventures of our time. Beginning with the vessel's first cruises, which lent support to the idea of continental drift, the Challenger played a key part in the widely publicized plate-tectonics revolution and its challenge to more conventional theories. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Composed in a prison cell in 1298 by Venetian merchant Marco Polo and Arthurian romance writer Rustichello of Pisa, The Description of the World relates Polo's experiences in Asia and at the court of Qubilai, the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. In addition to a new translation based on the Franco-Italian "F" manuscript of Polo's text, this edition includes genealogies of the Mongol rulers and nine maps of Polo's journey, as well as thorough annotation and an extensive bibliography.