The full text of Landor's classic, relating his adventures and misadventures in Tibet. This edition contains all the over 250 original black and white photographs. Complete--includes Volumes I and II and Appendices.

This is the story of how Thor Heyderdahl and five other men crossed the Pacific Ocean on a balsa-wood raft in an extraordinary bid to prove Heyderdahl's theory that the Polynesians undertook the same feat on such a craft over 1000 years ago.

Victorian traveller Mary Kingsley has been portrayed as a victim of 19th-century attitudes towards women, a brave and daring explorer, an anti-imperialist agitator and even a feminist heroine. In this biography, Dea Birkett examines and then confronts all these portraits. Mary Kingsley was neither victim nor rebel, but a late Victorian woman who manipulated the boundaries of her life without ever openly overstepping them. She argued against women's suffrage and for absolute differences between the races. She campaigned to prevent women becoming members of the learned societies in Britain, yet canoed up rapids in West Africa. Africa gave her a new life yet in the end it killed her.

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 collection focuses on different expeditions and their role in the process of knowledge acquisition from the eighteenth century onwards. It investigates various forms of scientific practice conducted during, after and before expeditions, and it places this discussion into the scientific context of experiments. In treating expeditions as experiments in a heuristic sense, we also propose that the expedition is a variation on the laboratory in which different practices can be conducted and where the transformation of uncertain into certain knowledge is tested. The experimental positioning of the expedition brings together an ensemble of techniques, strategies, material agents and social actors, and illuminates the steps leading from observation to facts and documentation. The chapters show the variety of scientific interests that motivated expeditions with their focus on natural history, geology, ichthyology, botany, zoology, helminthology, speleology, physical anthropology, oceanography, meteorology and magnetism.

Under the direction of A. A. Humphreys by Clarence King.

In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West, from Lewis and Clark's expedition in the early 19th century to the closing of the frontier by the early 20th. He introduces us to explorers, mountain men, cowboys, missionaries and soldiers, taking us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading campaign in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. Throughout, Brands explores the contradictions of the West and explodes its longstanding myths. The West has been celebrated as the proving ground of American individualism; in reality, the West depended on collective action and federal largesse more than any other region. The West brought out the finest and the basest in those who ventured there, evoking both selfless heroism and unspeakable violence. Visons of great wealth drew generations of Americans westward, but El Dorado was never more elusive than in the West. Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.

At the heart of this landmark collection of essays rests a single question: What impact, good or bad, immediate or long-range, did Lewis and Clark's journey have on the Indians whose homelands they traversed? The nine writers in this volume each provide their own unique answers; from Pulitzer prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, who offers a haunting essay evoking the voices of the past; to Debra Magpie Earling's illumination of her ancestral family, their survival, and the magic they use to this day; to Mark N. Trahant's attempt to trace his own blood back to Clark himself; and Roberta Conner's comparisons of the explorer's journals with the accounts of the expedition passed down to her. Incisive and compelling, these essays shed new light on our understanding of this landmark journey into the American West.

A pioneering marine biologist takes us down into the deep ocean in this 'thrilling blend of hard science and high adventure' (New York Times) Edith Widder grew up determined to become a marine biologist. But after complications from a surgery during college caused her to go temporarily blind, she became fascinated by light as well as the power of optimism. Below the Edge of Darkness explores the depths of the planet's oceans as Widder seeks to understand bioluminescence, one of the most important and widely used forms of communication in nature. In the process, she reveals hidden worlds and a dazzling menagerie of behaviours and animals. Alongside Widder, we experience life-and-death equipment malfunctions and witness breakthroughs in technology and understanding, all of it set against a growing awareness of the deteriorating health of our largest and least understood ecosystem. 'A vivid account of ocean life' ROBIN MCKIE, GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY 'Edie's story is one of hardscrabble optimism, two-fisted exploration and groundbreaking research. She's done things I dream of doing' JAMES CAMERON 'A book of marvels, marvellously written' RICHARD DAWKINS

One of the most extraordinary survival stories ever told -- Aron Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of bravery brought him home.

It started out as a simple hike in the Utah canyonlands on a warm Saturday afternoon. For Aron Ralston, a twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer and outdoorsman, a walk into the remote Blue John Canyon was a chance to get a break from a winter of solo climbing Colorado's highest and toughest peaks. He'd earned this weekend vacation, and though he met two charming women along the way, by early afternoon he finally found himself in his element: alone, with just the beauty of the natural world all around him.

It was 2:41 P.M. Eight miles from his truck, in a deep and narrow slot canyon, Aron was climbing down off a wedged boulder when the rock suddenly, and terrifyingly, came loose. Before he could get out of the way, the falling stone pinned his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall.

And so began six days of hell for Aron Ralston. With scant water and little food, no jacket for the painfully cold nights, and the terrible knowledge that he'd told no one where he was headed, he found himself facing a lingering death -- trapped by an 800-pound boulder 100 feet down in the bottom of a canyon. As he eliminated his escape options one by one through the days, Aron faced the full horror of his predicament: By the time any possible search and rescue effort would begin, he'd most probably have died of dehydration, if a flash flood didn't drown him before that.

What does one do in the face of almost certain death? Using the video camera from his pack, Aron began recording his grateful good-byes to his family and friends all over the country, thinking back over a life filled with adventure, and documenting a last will and testament with the hope that someone would find it. (For their part, his family and friends had instigated a major search for Aron, the amazing details of which are also documented here for the first time.) The knowledge of their love kept Aron Ralston alive, until a divine inspiration on Thursday morning solved the riddle of the boulder. Aron then committed the most extreme act imaginable to save himself.

"Between a Rock and a Hard Place" -- a brilliantly written, funny, honest, inspiring, and downright astonishing report from the line where death meets life -- will surely take its place in the annals of classic adventure stories.

The impact of Christopher Columbus's first transatlantic voyage launched an unprecedented explosion of European exploration. Throughout the last 500 years, scholars have recognized this transforming event, and they have written extensively on the subject. To date, no American author has dedicated a book to Columbus's life before 1492. This book is a biography of Christopher Columbus prior to 1492, with a focus on those geographical experiences that affected his formulation of a transatlantic concept. Incorporating extensive research from American and European scholars (historians, geographers, anthropologists, and cartographers), the author proposes that Columbus systematically built a transatlantic voyage proposal from knowledge gained on previous voyages in the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Atlantic Ocean. The extensive use of maps place Columbus's actions on specific geographic land and ocean locations. The curious public, especially persons interested in gleaning more information about Columbus's maritime background, will find a plethora of maps to visualize the extent of his early travels.