Explorer-naturalists Robert Brown and Mungo Park played a pivotal role in the development of natural history and exploration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This work is a fresh examination of the lives and careers of Brown and Park and their impact on natural history and exploration. Brown and Park were part of a group of intrepid naturalists who brought back some of the flora and fauna they encountered, drawings of what they observed, and most importantly, their ideas. The educated public back home was able to gain an understanding of the diversity in nature. This eventually led to the development of new ways of regarding the natural world and the eventual development of a coherent theory of organic evolution. This book considers these naturalists, Brown, Park, and their contemporaries, from the perspective of the Scottish Enlightenment. Brown's investigations in natural history created a fertile environment for breakthroughs in taxonomy, cytology, and eventually evolution. Brown's pioneering work in plant taxonomy allowed biologists to look at the animal and plant kingdoms differently. Park's adventures stimulated significant discoveries in exploration. Brown and Park's adventures formed a bridge to such journeys as Charles Darwin's voyage on H.M.S. Beagle, which led to a revolution in biology and full explication of the theory of evolution.

Based on his day-by-day journals written on the highest peaks of five of the seven continents of the world, Nick Comande shares his personal observations, triumphs and tragedies while climbing some of the highest and coldest mountain peaks in the world while raising money for charity at the same time. This book follows how amateur mountain climber Nick Comande with no formal training whatsoever, traveled from Africa to Antarctica, fighting extreme temperatures, harsh weather conditions, a plane crash and bureaucratic red tape. Trying not only to reach new personal goals, but also helping others at the same time. Nick Comande climbed and raised funds to help The American Cancer society, The American Diabetes Association and The Muscular Dystrophy Association.

"Lure of the Trade Winds: Two Women Sailing the Pacific Ocean" transports readers to a place where few have gone before: aboard a thirty-four-foot boat, cruising the Pacific Ocean. Join author Jeannine Talley, as she and her sailing partner, Joy Smith, embark on the journey of a lifetime.

Each day is a new adventure aboard the Banshee. Talley and her partner are stranded on a reef in Vanuatu, contract malaria, rescue a wrecked boat, visit a skull site in the Solomon Islands, and journey to remote islands whose inhabitants still bear the scars of a brutal colonial past. When their electronic navigational equipment is lost in a storm, they must use sextant navigation, depending entirely on sun sights, to make a long passage north from the South Pacifi c to Micronesia.

In "Lure of the Trade Winds," the two women travel to some of the most remote areas of the world and interact with the inhabitants within their social settings. They unravel some of the world's mysteries, plunge into the unknown, and come face to face with some of the darker aspects of legacy of colonialism. The tale of their travels proves once again that the spirit of adventure knows no bounds.

At age eight Marilyn Harlin already knew she wanted to be a scientist. Throughout the peaks and valleys in her life-including widowhood when her husband fell off a mountain in Switzerland, and the challenges of raising two children on her own--she kept her eyes on her goal and eventually joined the faculty at the University of Rhode Island as its only female botany professor. Marilyn's mission in her career and into retirement has been to inspire youth, especially girls, to venture into the sciences. Making Waves is a memoir of a progressive life lived with passion.

From an early age, Brice H. Goldsborough exhibited an unending curiosity about the world around him; he was interested in almost anything mechanical, was inquisitive about weather patterns, and yearned to know more about aerodynamics. This lifelong quest for information led him to found Pioneer Instrument Company in New York in 1919, a firm that eventually became one of the world's largest producers of reliable aviation instruments. In this biography, author Robert Dye, Goldsborough's great-nephew, tells the story of a man who became an expert in meteorology, navigation, and aircraft instrument design and changed the course of aviation history. Based on personal letters, articles, and news clippings, "A Pioneer in Aviation" follows Goldsborough's life as a teen, his time in the navy studying electricity, and his accomplishments, such as establishing China's first offshore radio station and supervising the construction of Haiti's first radio station. Detailing one of aviation's unsung heroes, "A Pioneer in Aviation" shows the man who designed, built, and installed the instrument panel for "The Spirit of St. Louis" and flew with Charles Lindbergh during September 1927 and how he came to be associated with other great names in aviation history such as Glenn Curtiss, Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, and Igor Sikorsky.

Europeans' romanticist imaginings of people from the South Pacific have been around since the Enlightenment and have been significantly informed by the accounts of voyages to Tahiti by people such as Louis Bougainville. This book shows that the overtly promiscuous behavior that the French perceived as hospitality on the part of the Tahitians in 1768 was actually a defensive ploy, and that our contemporary image of sex and sexuality in Pacific Island societies is influenced by a fantasy based on this French misperception. This volume takes a very detailed look at traditional Tahitian culture and society and provides a realistic description of what happened on Tahiti when Europeans encountered the people who lived there. Bolyanatz provides a very readable history of South Pacific exploration and Enlightenment thinking. Anyone interested in the development of Enlightenment thought and the way it has developed since the 18th century will enjoy this book.

What is the nature of things? Must I think my own way through the world? What is justice? How can I be me? How should we treat each other? Before the Greeks, the idea of the world was dominated by god-kings and their priests, in a life ruled by imagined metaphysical monsters. 2,500 years ago, in a succession of small eastern Mediterranean harbour-cities, that way of thinking began to change. Men (and some women) decided to cast off mental subservience and apply their own worrying and thinking minds to the conundrums of life. These great innovators shaped the beginnings of philosophy. Through the questioning voyager Odysseus, Homer explored how we might navigate our way through the world. Heraclitus in Ephesus was the first to consider the interrelatedness of things. Xenophanes of Colophon was the first champion of civility. In Lesbos, the Aegean island of Sappho and Alcaeus, the early lyric poets asked themselves ‘How can I be true to myself?’ In Samos, Pythagoras imagined an everlasting soul and took his ideas to Italy where they flowered again in surprising and radical forms. Prize-winning writer Adam Nicolson travels through this transforming world and asks what light these ancient thinkers can throw on our deepest preconceptions. Sparkling with maps, photographs and artwork, How to Be is a journey into the origins of Western thought. Hugely formative ideas emerged in these harbour-cities: fluidity of mind, the search for coherence, a need for the just city, a recognition of the mutability of things, a belief in the reality of the ideal — all became the Greeks’ legacy to the world. Born out of a rough, dynamic—and often cruel— moment in human history, it was the dawn of enquiry, where these fundamental questions about self, city and cosmos, asked for the first time, became, as they remain, the unlikely bedrock of understanding.

This book celebrates the Arctic, exploring the natural history that has so inspired generations. Early travellers to the Arctic brought back tales of amazing creatures and of the endurance required of visitors, the Arctic becoming a land of inspiration and imagination. Adventurers test themselves against it. Its wildlife still amazes - when film and television show Earth's natural wonders it is always the polar regions that draw the biggest audiences. But today the Arctic is in retreat. Humanity's relentless exploitation of the Earth's resources in the pursuit of progress has, it seems, altered the climate and threatens the ice and ice-living organisms. It is a cliche that the loss of a species diminishes us, but it is true nonetheless. Even to people who have never seen a Polar Bear its loss will be immeasurable as the bear is iconic, both defining and reflecting the Arctic. This Traveller's Guide is designed to give visitors a handy identification guide to the wildlife they might see as they travel around, including stunning photography and detailed descriptions of each species.