In life we are occasionally faced with detours. Some of them are thrust upon us just when we think we have life all figured out. Sometimes, however, they are self-created. We choose to take them, driven by some inner desire or passion. Author Jason Thiessen's extraordinary adventure was just such a detour-borne of the dreams of a young boy with only an atlas as his guide to an unseen world.

Nearly thirty years after those dreams began, they became a reality. Thiessen, a man with a wife, a career, and a mortgage, set out on a journey of discovery to find purpose and meaning while attempting to answer lifelong questions. His detour from an otherwise traditional life path took him to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia, ultimately traveling twice the distance of the circumference of the earth. Just as his adventure brought him from the heights of the Andes to the depths of the Dead Sea, so too did Thiessen take an emotional journey from feelings of excitement, fulfillment, and joy to those of anger, frustration, and despair.

"Around My World: A Detour on Life's Journey" tells a story for anyone who is on their own journey to reconcile modern-day pressures and realities with the insights that world travel can bring to one's life.

Revered for years as a saint, David Livingstone was an interesting character--difficult, demanding, and unsympathetic but also single-minded, determined, patient, and brave. The first European to cross Africa, he discovered the Victoria Falls and survived a shipwreck, attacks by natives, and being mauled by a lion.

Someone told me putting pen to paper, reliving the events of my journey would do me good. Therapeutic they said? What should have been a hop, skip and a jump from Grenada in the Caribbean to the UK in a forty foot sailing yacht? Became, depending on your point of view: An epic fail? Mis-adventure? Adventure of a lifetime? Experienced sailors may consider it the latter. Foolhardy that someone with such limited experience should have attempted it. Armchair adventures might shudder, congratulating themselves it wasn't them. My hope is you, the reader whatever your disposition is: Gasp at the terror. Chuckle to yourself at the funny, sometimes ludicrous situations. Feel anger and frustration from dealing with bureaucratic and corrupt officials. Ultimately sighing with relief and satisifaction that I survived the reality, and you enjoyed taking part in reading about it.

An annual collection of studies on individuals who have made contributions to the development of geography and geographical thought. Each paper describes the geographer's education, life and work, discusses their influence and spread of academic ideas and includes a bibliography of their work.

Tinling has written a book about the exploration and derring-do of 42 women who, individually or with another, ventured forth to parts unknown or little known in the 19th and 20th centuries. . . . The accomplishment of each is sketched in biographical form that will variously intrigue, interest, and fascinate readers of varied persuasions. "Choice"

Despite social restraints and limited financial resources, women have traveled in the past two centuries to virtually every unexplored region of the earth, sometimes with a male companion and often leading their own expeditions. In this book, Tinling offers portraits of some forty-five enterprising and intrepid women who have explored uncharted territory investigating the lives and customs of remote human societies, study rare plants and wild animals, or excavating the ruins of ancient civilizations. The subjects include English, American, and continental European women. In addition to detailed biographical essays, the author presents comprehensive bibliographical data on the published and unpublished works of the subjects and the articles and books that have been written about them.

The explorations of these women have yielded impressive contributions to many areas of knowledge, including geography, archaeology, botany, zoology, and anthropology, as well as sensitive accounts of travel and discovery. Each of the biographical sketches supplies a chronological listing of the subject's writings and a list of chief bibliographical sources. The volume concludes with an annotated list of travel books by women in the English language, a general bibliography, and an index. This book is an appropriate resource for studies in women's history, geography, social history, and anthropology, and an appealing choice for women readers with an interest in travel and biography.

DIVING HEADLONG INTO RIB TICKLING SITUATIONS, WITH HILARIOUS CONSEQUENCES. THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH OUT LOUD Leading up to retirement, authoress Patti Trickett and her husband Chris bought a 2 berth motor home. Enjoying regular short breaks in the U.K; they eventually had an extended tour of Scotland to celebrate their retirement. Learning the necessary skills of touring, the experienced some hilarious situations Returning home, they decided to do extensive planning, and drive their motor home through Central Europe to their villa in Crete Come with them, as they drive over the Swiss Alps. Live their hippy life style, as they camp near the golden sands of the Adriatic. Beach comb for shells, and collect driftwood for the BBQ, then dance in the surf at midnight under a full moon. You are invited to take a romantic trip on a gondola in Venice, or do some sightseeing at the ancient Acropolis of Athens. The ultimate destination was to arrive at their villa in Crete, and visit the remote villages, high in the Psiloritis Mountains, where they make true and lasting friendships, and meet many colourful characters whilst out walking.

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.

'The Broadway Travellers contains few more exciting stories than that of Staden.' Sunday Times
'The present translation of his adventures among the Brazilian cannibals, with which the gruesome original woodcuts are included, now make Staden's story available to a larger public...'New Statesman
The first part of the book is a straightforward account of the author's personal experiences. The second part is a detailed treatise on the customs of the Tupinamba, their polity, trade, religion, manufactures and warlike undertakings, and of the flora and fauna of the country. In-depth information is given on rites and ceremonies (those on cannibalism are not for the faint-hearted reader), government and laws and religious observances.
Facsimiles of woodcuts.

This collection of essays assesses the interrelationship between exploration, empire-building and science in the opening up of the Pacific Ocean by Europeans between the early 16th and mid-19th century. It explores both the role of various sciences in enabling European imperial projects in the region, and how the exploration of the Pacific in turn shaped emergent scientific disciplines and their claims to authority within Europe. Drawing on a range of disciplines (from the history of science to geography, imperial history to literary criticism), this volume examines the place of science in cross-cultural encounters, the history of cartography in Oceania, shifting understandings of race and cultural difference in the Pacific, and the place of ships, books and instruments in the culture of science. It reveals the exchanges and networks that connected British, French, Spanish and Russian scientific traditions, even in the midst of imperial competition, and the ways in which findings in diverse fields, from cartography to zoology, botany to anthropology, were disseminated and crafted into an increasingly coherent image of the Pacific, its resources, peoples, and histories. This is a significant body of scholarship that offers many important insights for anthropologists and geographers, as well as for historians of science and European imperialism.