In this work, Buschmann incorporates neglected Spanish visions into the European perceptions of the emerging Pacific world. The book argues that Spanish diplomats and intellectuals attempted to create an intellectual link between the Americas and the Pacific Ocean.

Although much has been written about Columbus's life in Italy and Spain, little has been written about his formative years in Portugal. This work is the first book-length analysis of Columbus's stay in Portugal and Madeira from 1476 to 1485 and his later experiences in the Portuguese islands of the Azores and the Madeiras. The work stresses the influence the Portuguese had in educating Columbus about the sea, and it depicts his famous voyage to the New World as a logical sequence of the pioneering voyages of the Portuguese in the North Atlantic and along the West Coast of Africa. The work attempts to sort legend from fact and debunks the many myths about Columbus's stays on the island of Madeira.

In 1875, a team of cartographers, geologists, and scientists under the direction of Ferdinand V. Hayden entered the Four Corners area for what they thought would be a calm summer's work completing a previous survey. Their accomplishments would go down in history as one of the great American surveying expeditions of the nineteenth century. By skillfully weaving the surveyors' diary entries, field notes, and correspondence with newspaper accounts, historians Robert S. McPherson and Susan Rhoades Neel bring the Hayden Survey to life. Mapping the Four Corners provides an entertaining, engaging narrative of the team's experiences, contextualized with a thoughtful introduction and conclusion. Accompanied by the great photographer William Henry Jackson, Hayden's team quickly found their trip to be more challenging than expected. The travelers describe wrangling half-wild pack mules, trying to sleep in rain-soaked blankets, and making tea from muddy, alkaline water. Along the way, they encountered diverse peoples, evidence of prehistoric civilizations, and spectacular scenery - Hispanic villages in Colorado and New Mexico; Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and other Anasazi sites; and the Hopi mesas. Not everyone they met was glad to see them: in southeastern Utah surveyors fought and escaped a band of Utes and Paiutes who recognized that the survey meant dispossession from their homeland. Hayden saw his expedition as a scientific endeavor focused on geology, geographic description, cartographic accuracy, and even ethnography, but the search for economic potential was a significant underlying motive. As this book shows, these pragmatic scientists were on the lookout for gold beneath every rock, grazing lands in every valley, and economic opportunity around each bend in the trail. The Hayden Survey ultimately shaped the American imagination in contradictory ways, solidifying the idea of ""progress"" - and government funding of its pursuit - while also revealing, via Jackson's photographs, a landscape with a beauty hitherto unknown and unimagined.

This is a study of the manner in which certain mythical notions of the world become accepted as fact. Dathorne shows how particular European concepts such as El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, a race of Amazons, and monster (including cannibal) images were first associated with the Orient. After the New World encounter they were repositioned to North and South America. The book examines the way in which Arabs and Africans are conscripted into the view of the world and takes an unusual, non-Eurocentric viewpoint of how Africans journeyed to the New World and Europe, participating in, what may be considered, an early stage of world exploration and discovery. The study concludes by looking at European travel literature from the early journeys of St. Brendan, through the Viking voyages and up to Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville. In all these instances, the encounters seem to justify mythical belief. Dathorne's interest in the subject is both intellectual and passionate since, coming from Guyana, he was very much part of this malformed Weltschmerz.

Shambles paints a vivid portrait of the beauty and grandeur of Antarctica. Through a journey resplendent with sheer joy and heart-breaking loss, one man must wage a war against nature. The consequences of that battle will echo throughout a lifetime. In 1981, Stephen Tait was part of a four-man traveling party in Antarctica. After several equipment problems and fierce weather conditions, the team found themselves in a very dangerous position. They must battle the brutal climate and bleak terrain in order to make it back to the comforts of civilization. As both the temperature and morale severely plummet, the men struggle to survive. Will they be able to find their way out of the inhospitable wilderness of Antarctica and if they do, will they be able to live with the horrors they faced during their fateful trip?

Through its extensive use of primary source materials and invaluable contextual notes, this book offers a documented history of one of the most famous adventures in early American history: the Lewis and Clark expedition. This book is the first to situate the Lewis and Clark expedition within the political and scientific ambitions of Thomas Jefferson. It spans a forty-year period in American history, from 1783–1832, covering Jefferson's early interest in trying to organize an expedition to explore the American West through the difficult negotiations of the Louisiana Purchase, the formation of the "Corps of Discovery," the expedition's incredible journey into the unknown, and its aftermath. The story of the expedition is told not just through the journals and letters of Lewis and Clark, but also through the firsthand accounts of the expedition's other members, which included Sacagawea, a Native American woman, and York, an African American slave. The book features more than 100 primary source documents, including letters to and from Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and others as the expedition was being organized; diary excerpts during the expedition; and, uniquely, letters documenting the lives of Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and York after the expedition.

Between 1982 and 2012, I took 95 major trips to foreign and domestic destinations as tour designer and leader. My tours were tailored to include experiences not enjoyed by the average traveler. Bet you didn't see what we did This book is about: Traveling off the beaten path to see the beauty and unusual details that others miss Cultural and historical facts and trivia that add interest to the traveler's experience Humorous events that occurred on our journeys The importance of seeing everything there was to see where we went, knowing that we may not be back Entertaining episodes, unique people, fresh perspectives, and "close calls" encountered along the way. With the daring of "Indiana Jones" and the enthusiasm of "Auntie Mame" you will be tempted to follow your heart and see the world.

Frank Thomas Morano's search for holy men and women has taken him around the world. In his memoirs, The Secret Cycle, he shares the wisdom he has found.

Despite earlier naval expeditions undertaken for reasons of diplomacy or trade, it wasn't until the early 1400s that European maritime explorers established sea routes through most of the globe's inhabited regions, uniting a divided earth into a single system of navigation. From the early Portuguese and Spanish quests for gold and glory, to later scientific explorations of land and culture, this new understanding of the world's geography created global trade, built empires, defined taste and alliances of power, and began the journey toward the cultural, political, and economic globalization in which we live today. Ronald Love's engaging narrative chapters guide the reader from Marco Polo's exploration of the Mongol empire to Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe, the search for a Northern Passage, Henry Hudson's voyage to Greenland, the discovery of Tahiti, the perils of scurvy, mutiny, and warring empires, and the eventual extension of Western influence into almost every corner of the globe. Biographies and primary documents round out the work.

2014 bronze medal winner eLit Awards, 2013 gold medal winner Living Now Awards, March 2014 #1 book of the month Stevo's Internet Reviews, June 2013 book of the month Pacific Book Review. Wild Among Us: true adventures of a female photographer who stalks bears, wolves, mountain lions, wild horses and other elusive wildlife is a fascinating series of autobiographical stories by Pat Toth-Smith. The story telling pulls you into her perilous world, where you share the strange and sometimes dangerous situations she navigates as she travels the highways and wilderness areas of North America. In the end it all seems worth it when we see the results of her labors, the stunning wildlife photos, the vivid observations of the animal s behavior and the hard earned knowledge gleaned from learning on the job. Wild Among Us is unique in that it has the aesthetic beauty of a fine art photo book combined with the powerful stories of pursuit, danger and life-threatening wildlife encounters, that push the author to face her fears and rely on her intuition to survive and become stronger for it."

Richard Burton's life offers dazzling riches. He was one of the greatest Victorian explorers, an innovative translator and brilliant linguist, a prolific travel writer, a pioneer in the fields of anthropology and sexual psychology, a mesmeric lover, a spy and a publisher of erotica. Fawn Brodie has created a vivid portrait of this remarkable man, who emerges from the richly textured fabric of his time. His travels to Mecca and Medina dressed as a Muslim pilgrim, his witnessing of the human sacrifices at Dahomey and his unlikely but loving partnership with his pious Catholic bride are all treated with warmth, scholarship and understanding.

Alexander von Humboldt, sometimes called 'the last man who knew everything', was an extraordinary polymath of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1798 he received unprecedented permission from the Spanish Crown to explore its American and Caribbean colonies, which he did from 1799-1804. This is the journal of those explorations, in which he extensively covers the region's topography, geology, fauna and flora, anthropology and comparative linguistics. Volume III sees him recording more information on Venezuela, visiting Cuba where he also writes about local politics and speaks out fervently against the slave trade; he then sails for Colombia. The volume ends with a comprehensive geognostic description of the northern part of South America.

Most of us are fascinated by the conventional storybook account of Christopher Columbus' heroic discovery of America in 1492. Yet, should the credit for discovering America go to a man who insisted it was but a few islands off the shores of China?

In "Terra Cognita," Eviatar Zerubavel argues that physical encounters are only one part of the complex, multifaceted process of discovery. Such encounters must be complemented by an understanding of the true identity of what is being discovered. The small group of islands claimed by Columbus to have been discovered off the shores of Asia was a far cry from what we now call America. The discovery of the New World was not achieved in a single day but was a slow process--mental as well as physical--that lasted almost three hundred years. By celebrating 1492 as a year of discovery, we inevitably distort the reality of history.

In vividly documenting how a slowly emerging New World gradually forced itself into Europe's consciousness, Zerubavel shows that Columbus did not discover America on October 12, 1492. Supplemented by fascinating old maps and a new preface written for this paperback edition, "Terra Cognita" will be of interest to historians, geographers, cognitive scientists, sociologists, and students of culture.

Colonial Transformations covers early modern English poetry and plays, Gaelic poetry, and a wide range of English colonial propaganda. In the book, Bach contends that England’s colonial ambitions surface in all of its literary texts. Those texts played multiple roles in England’s colonial expansions and emerging imperialism. Those roles included publicizing colonial efforts, defining some people as white and some as barbarians, constituting enduring stereotypes of native people, and resisting official versions of colonial encounters.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles (1519-1574) founded St. Augustine in 1565. His expedition was documented by his brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solis de Meras, who left a detailed and passionate account of the events leading to the establishment of America's oldest city. Until recently, the only extant version of Solis de Meras's record was one single manuscript which Eugenio Ruidiaz y Caravia transcribed in 1893, and subsequent editions and translations have always followed Ruidiaz's text. In 2012 David Arbesu discovered a more complete record: a manuscript including folios lost for centuries and, more important, excluding portions of the 1893 publication based on retellings rather than the original document. In the resulting volume, Pedro Menendez de Aviles and the Conquest of Florida, Arbesu sheds light on principal events missing from the story of St. Augustine's founding. By consulting the original chronicle, Arbesu provides readers with the definitive bilingual edition of this seminal text.