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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Geographical discovery & exploration
Available in English for the first time, The Apache Indians tells
the story of the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad's sojourn among
the Apaches near the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona and his
epic journey to locate the "lost" group of their brethren in the
Sierra Madres in the 1930s. Ingstad traveled to Canada, where he
lived as a trapper for four years with the Chipewyan Indians. The
Chipewyans told him tales about people from their tribe who
traveled south, never to return. He decided to go south to find the
descendants of his Chipewyan friends and determine if they had
similar stories. In 1936 Ingstad arrived in the White Mountains and
worked as a cowboy with the Apaches. His hunch about the Apaches'
northern origins was confirmed by their stories, but the elders
also told him about another group of Apaches who had fled from the
reservation and were living in the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Ingstad
launched an expedition on horseback to find these "lost" people,
hoping to record more tales of their possible northern origin but
also to document traditions and knowledge that might have been lost
among the Apaches living on the reservation. Through Ingstad's keen
and observant eyes, we catch unforgettable glimpses of the
landscape and inhabitants of the southwestern borderlands as he and
his Apache companions, including one of Geronimo's warriors, embark
on a dangerous quest to find the elusive Sierra Madre Apaches. The
Apache Indians is a powerful echo of a past that has now become a
myth.
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.
The Pacific of the early eighteenth century was not a single ocean
but a vast and varied waterscape, a place of baffling complexity,
with 25,000 islands and seemingly endless continental shorelines.
But with the voyages of Captain James Cook, global attention turned
to the Pacific, and European and American dreams of scientific
exploration, trade, and empire grew dramatically. By the time of
the California gold rush, the Pacific's many shores were fully
integrated into world markets-and world consciousness. The Great
Ocean draws on hundreds of documented voyages-some painstakingly
recorded by participants, some only known by archeological remains
or indigenous memory-as a window into the commercial, cultural, and
ecological upheavals following Cook's exploits, focusing in
particular on the eastern Pacific in the decades between the 1770s
and the 1840s. Beginning with the expansion of trade as seen via
the travels of William Shaler, captain of the American Brig Lelia
Byrd, historian David Igler uncovers a world where voyagers,
traders, hunters, and native peoples met one another in episodes
often marked by violence and tragedy. Igler describes how
indigenous communities struggled against introduced diseases that
cut through the heart of their communities; how the ordeal of
Russian Timofei Tarakanov typified the common practice of taking
hostages and prisoners; how Mary Brewster witnessed first-hand the
bloody "great hunt" that decimated otters, seals, and whales; how
Adelbert von Chamisso scoured the region, carefully compiling his
notes on natural history; and how James Dwight Dana rivaled Charles
Darwin in his pursuit of knowledge on a global scale. These
stories-and the historical themes that tie them together-offer a
fresh perspective on the oceanic worlds of the eastern Pacific.
Ambitious and broadly conceived, The Great Ocean is the first book
to weave together American, oceanic, and world history in a
path-breaking portrait of the Pacific world.
In this book, Peter F. Krough examines the major events and
individuals which figured prominently in the movement of "centers
of initiative" and of the world's "main axis of commerce and
communication" from East to West over the last five hundred years.
The book follows the westward migration of the world's "center of
gravity" from China in the fifteenth century across Eurasia to the
Near East, onward to Europe and then to America and, now, to the
Pacific Rim. The focus is on historical figures who, by virtue of
their vision and action, led the movement. It highlights what
unfolds when a powerful idea is embraced by a formidable
individual, who pursues the idea with uncommon ability and
intensity. Along the way, the book identifies qualities that make
for leadership on a grand scale which aspiring leaders may find
instructive and even inspirational.
Greeted with coast-to-coast acclaim on publication,
Fernandez-Armesto's ambitious history of world exploration sets a
new standard. Presenting the subject for the first time on a truly
global scale, Fernandez-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over
the past five millennia, lay down the routes of contact that have
drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. The Wall Street
Journal calls it "impressive...a huge story [told] with gusto and
panache." To the Washington Post, "Pathfinders is propelled by an
Argonaut of an author, indefatigable and daring. It's a wild ride."
And in a front-page review, the Seattle Times hails its "tart and
elegant presentation...full of surprises. Fernandez-Armesto's
lively mind, pithy phrasing, and stunningly thorough and diverse
knowledge are a constant pleasure." A plenitude of illustrations
and maps in color and black and white augment this rich history. In
Pathfinders, winner of the 2007 World History Association Book
Prize, we have a definitive treatment of a grand subject.
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.
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.
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