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.

This is the story behind the greatest oil discovery success of last century and the building of the Trans Alaska pipeline. This book details and celebrates a colossal oil exploration feat and a world-class engineering and construction project.

Kerr's Voyages is a comprehensive account of sea and land voyages covering 1,000 years of exploration from the 9th to the 18th centuries. Kerr's Voyages 4 covers the Southern Hemisphere. It provides a rich collection of voyages by Captain James Cook, together with journeys of discovery in the Southern Oceans by other key figures such as Commodore Byron and Captains Wallis, Carteret, Clerke and Gore. The accounts of Cook's voyages are particularly detailed, accurate and informative, and contain descriptions of the many islands and countries discovered and detail of the inhabitants, their customs, beliefs and languages. Voyages around the Cape of Good Hope, encounters with the natives of Tierra del Fuego, the search for a Southern Continent, the discovery of New Caledonia, human sacrifice in the Sandwich Islands, as well as tales of the many incidents and skirmishes that befell the ships and their crews, make this set an engaging and informative collection. The six-volume set contains, in addition, an extensive new Introduction by Glyn Williams, one of the leading experts on Captain Cook and his contemporaries.

Exploration was a central and perhaps defining aspect of the West's encounters with other peoples and lands. Rather than reproduce celebratory narratives of individual heroism and national glory, this volume focuses on exploration's instrumental role in shaping a European sense of exceptionalism and its iconic importance in defining the terms of cultural engagement with other peoples. In chapters offering broad geographic range, the contributors address many of the key themes of recent research on exploration, including exploration's contribution to European imperial expansion, Western scientific knowledge, Enlightenment ideas and practices, and metropolitan print culture. They reassess indigenous peoples' responses upon first contacts with European explorers, their involvement as intermediaries in the operations of expeditions, and the complications that their prior knowledge posed for European claims of discovery. Underscoring that exploration must be seen as a process of mediation between representation and reality, this book provides a fresh and accessible introduction to the ongoing reinterpretation of exploration's role in the making of the modern world.

This two-volume work by Theodor Koch-Grunberg (1872-1924), director of the Ethnographical Museum in Berlin, tells the story of his major expedition to North-West Brazil and describes the indigenous tribes and the local geography. In contrast to Koch-Grunberg's many monographs and essays on the same subject (listed in his Foreword), this book is directed at a lay readership. Koch-Grunberg states his aim of correcting a false impression of the indigenous peoples drawn from 'novels about Indians read during one's youth' and the accounts of his explorations are permeated by a deeply-held respect for the humanity he encounters. Although its primary interest to scholars lies in its anthropological and ethnographical content, the text is full of botanical, geographical and linguistic detail, interspersed with photographs taken by the author. Volume 1, published in 1909, covers the author's travels from Para to Sao Felippe.