Covering the adventures of coastal and ocean explorers who made key discoveries and landmark observations from northern California up the coastline to Alaska during the mid-1700s to the early 1800s, this anthology of primary source journal entries, book excerpts, maps, and drawings enables readers to "discover" the Northwest Coast for themselves. More than 200 years ago, explorers traveled from Central America, Russia, and even Europe to explore the coastline of the American Pacific Northwest, with goals of developing new trade routes, claiming territory for their home countries, expanding their fur trade, or exploring in the name of scientific discovery. This book will take readers to the decks of the great ships and along for the adventures of legendary explorers, such as James Cook, Alejandro Malaspina, and George Vancouver. This book collects primary source materials such as journal entries, book excerpts, maps, and drawings that document how explorers first experienced the unknown Pacific Northwest coast, as seen through the eyes of non-native people. Readers will learn how explorers such as Vitus Bering and Robert Gray used the full extent of their powers of observation to record the landscape, animals, and plants they witnessed as well as their interactions with indigenous peoples during their search for the mythic Northwest Passage. The book also explains how the maritime explorers of this period mapped the remote regions of the Northwest Coast, working without the benefit of modern technology and relying instead on their knowledge of a range of sciences, mathematics, and seamanship-in addition to their ability to endure harsh and dangerous conditions-to produce exceptionally detailed maps. Provides interesting primary source documents that serve to guide students through the interpretation process Supplies clear explanation and analysis of each document to promote critical understanding of the topics Supports Common Core Standards relating to primary source analysis as well as National Geography Standards, including how to apply geography to interpret the past and understanding the processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement Includes comprehensive biographies and background on each person of significance Presents information on indigenous peoples of the area, including the Tlingit, Chinook, Haida, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Gitxsan people

William Clark, co-captain of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition, devoted his adult life to describing the American West. But this task raised a daunting challenge: how best to bring an unknown continent to life for the young republic? Through Clark's life and career, this book explores how the West entered the American imagination. While he never called himself a writer or an artist, Clark nonetheless drew maps, produced books, drafted reports, surveyed landscapes, and wrote journals that made sense of the West for a new nation fascinated by the region's potential but also fearful of its dangers. "William Clark's World" presents a new take on the manifest destiny narrative and on the way the West took shape in the national imagination in the early nineteenth century.

The Historical Dictionary of the American Frontier covers early Euro-American exploration and development of frontiers in North America but not only the lands that would eventually be incorporated into the Unites States it also includes the multiple North American frontiers explored by Spain, France, Russia, England, and others. The focus is upon Euro-American activities in frontier exploration and development, but the roles of indigenous peoples in these processes is highlighted throughout. The history of this period is covered through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on explorers, adventurers, traders, religious orders, developers, and indigenous peoples. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the development of the American frontier.

'Always the leader and always the best' Bear Grylls 'Fiennes has so much to fit in, it's a wonder to grasp the full breadth of a lifetime of adventuring' - Compass Magazine 'Even readers with a broadly low tolerance for macho heroism will find themselves gripped . . . compelling' - Time Out Sir Ranulph Fiennes has travelled to the most dangerous and inaccessible places on Earth, almost died countless times, lost nearly half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity and been awarded a polar medal and an OBE. He has been an elite soldier, an athlete, a mountaineer, an explorer, a bestselling author and nearly replaced Sean Connery as James Bond. In his bestselling autobiography, Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, he describes how he led expeditions all over the world and became the first person to travel to both Poles on land. He tells of how he discovered the lost city of Ubar in Oman and attempted to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole - the expedition that cost him several fingers, and very nearly his life. And now the extraordinary life story of the world's greatest living explorer is re-published to celebrate his 75th birthday, with two new chapters to bring his story up to date - telling of more mountains climbed, including his ascent to the top of Mount Everest, and even more extraordinary and risky adventures.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How can one pilot cram so much into a single lifetime? Climb into Captain Terry Reece's cockpit, fasten your seatbelt, and hold on for an exciting journey into the world of aviation.

Born to a family of transplanted North Carolinians who moved to Washington State, a young Reece explored the hills of the Pacific Northwest. Hiking in the mountains and being a fire lookout gave him a taste of adventure, but he craved more-and he got it.

Reece's first flying lesson ended in a cloud of billowing dust, ripped metal, and broken Plexiglas. But that didn't keep him grounded. Over the next few years, he navigated his Lockheed C-130 to steamy nights in Rangoon, risky undercover aircraft deliveries to Libya, icy Arctic expeditions, and desperate flights out of the desert with machine guns pointed at his gut, to landing Boeing jets on short, icy runways on Alaska's Aleutian Chain.

Reece's entertaining biography delves into the fast-paced world of aviation and is filled with compassion, danger, bits of humor, and the follies of youth. It's also the remarkable tale of how Reece and his wife, Nancy, sought to keep his dream of flying alive through the years. From the freezing, isolated North Pole to the heat and heart of Africa, "Flying North South East and West" takes you to every direction on the compass and leads you to the adventure of a lifetime.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a world traveler, bestselling writer, and versatile researcher, a European salon sensation, and global celebrity. Yet the enormous literary echo he generated has remained largely unexplored. Humboldt inspired generations of authors, from Goethe and Byron to Enzensberger and Garcia Marquez, to reflect on cultural difference, colonial ideology, and the relation between aesthetics and science. This collection of one-hundred texts features tales of adventure, travel reports, novellas, memoirs, letters, poetry, drama, screenplays, and even comics-many for the first time in English. The selection covers the foundational myths and magical realism of Latin America, the intellectual independence of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman in the United States, discourses in Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, East, and West Germany, as well as recent films and fiction. This documented source book addresses scholars in cultural and postcolonial studies as well as readers in history and comparative literature.

Alexander von Humboldt explored the Spanish Empire on the verge of its collapse (1799-1804). He is the most significant German travel writer and the most important mediator between Europe and the Americas of the nineteenth century. His works integrated knowledge from two dozen domains. Today, he is at the center of debates on imperial discourse, postcolonialism, and globalization. This collection of fifty essays brings together a range of responses, many presented here for the first time in English. Authors from Schiller, Chateaubriand, Sarmiento, and Nietzsche, to Robert Musil, Kurt Tucholsky, Ernst Bloch, and Alejo Carpentier paint the historical background. Essays by contemporary travel writers and recent critics outline the current controversies on Humboldt. The source materials collected here will be indispensable to scholars of German, French, and Latin and North American literature as well as cultural and postcolonial studies, history, art history, and the history of science.

The dramatic story of the largest voyage of discovery in the history of the world, this is an astounding tale of courage, arrogance and adventure on the high seas from the author of 'In the Heart of the Sea'. Headed by the controversial Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, and consisting of six sailing vessels and 346 men, the 'Ex. Ex.' (the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-42) represented the largest voyage of discovery in the history of the world. Four years later, after losing two ships and seventy-one men, the expedition had logged 87,000 miles, surveyed 280 Pacific islands, and created 180 charts - some of which were still being used as late as World War II. The Expedition's scientists collected 4,000 zoological specimens, including 2,000 new species, and thousands of ethnographic artifacts that would become the basis of the Smithsonian Institution. The Expedition also mapped 800 miles of coastline in the Pacific Northwest, providing the federal government with the information it needed to stake its claim on the Oregon Territory. The Expedition's crowning achievement was the discovery of a new southern continent that Wilkes would name Antarctica. The Expedition ended in a dramatic series of court martials, with Wilkes and his crew levelling accusations of misconduct against each other. Nathaniel Philbrick's skilful retelling of this forgotten, yet astounding, episode in the history of sea faring is a fantastic adventure and a masterful work of historical reconstruction.

This book, first published in 1875 and reissued in 1973, analyses the limited evidence from the works of early Chinese historians that explorers from China had discovered a country they called Fusang - possibly western America, and in all probability Mexico. The original document on which Chinese historians based their accounts of Fusang was the report of a Buddhist monk called Hoei-shin, who, in the year 499 AD, returned from a long journey to the east.

The Space Shuttle tells the story of NASA's amazing Space Shuttle program and its 140 space flights (135 missions, plus five Approach and Landing Tests) in a uniquely designed and covetable way. The Space Shuttle program's first free flight test was taken on August 12, 1977. Its first official mission was launched on April 12, 1981. Its final mission and flight was taken on July 8, 2011. The program's six orbiter vehicles are Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. Each mission has its own fascinating story, and The Space Shuttle retells these stories, in chronological order, through incredible photos taken by NASA photojournalists, fine art photographers, and the astronauts themselves. Each image is accompanied by a short text that includes quick facts such as crew members, launch date, and landing date, as well as a short overview of highlights and purpose. For example, STS-78's mission was to study circadian rhythms in space; STS-41G's mission was to take photographs in-flight, seen in the IMAX movie The Dream Is Alive; and famously, the first untethered space walk, taken by astronaut Bruce McCandless on STS-41B using a self-propelled backpack unit (called a Man Maneuvering Unit [MMU]), allowed astronauts to capture satellites for retrieval and repair and for the planned construction of what became the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to this mission, astronauts were attached to the shuttle with safety lines. The photo of McCandless floating above Earth's surface is one of the most celebrated and famous space photographs ever. These are just a few of the 140 stories Miller tells in this beautiful volume.

This volume aims to advance the analysis about Amerigo Vespucci by considering and connecting several fields of study such as literary history, philology, the history of science and cartography, economic history, and the history of ideas. The multifaceted research frames guide the reader through the complex vicissitudes of Amerigo Vespucci's life. The receptions and implications explore the intense cultural and historical dynamics that shaped the decades between the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century.

Originally published in 1985. After the epoch-making voyages of exploration of Captain Cook, a series of further exploratory missions was financed by the British government to add to the knowledge of the lands of the southern hemisphere: 'a more minute examination of the coast' was, for example, the brief of the voyage of the Investigator. Specimens of plants and fauna were to be collected, and useful products noted. The combination of the commercial streak with a commitment to empirical science was typical of the interests of the eighteenth century. This book traces the explorations and achievements of those who undertook missions of this kind, as extensions of their patrons' eyes, as it were. The commercial possibilities - of cotton, furs, foodstuffs, and other products - were exploited to the full, and the achievements of science thus helped to strengthen the imperial effort. Notable figures include the distinguished naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and the notorious Captain Bligh of the Bounty. The fascination and wide-ranging story is told with full scholarly documentation and many new insights and discoveries.

In 2014, a collection of papers was found on eBay: a scrapbook, inside which was written 'Testimonial Book of Dragoman Solomon N. Negima'. The letters pasted into the testimonial book bear recommendations of Negima's services as dragoman - a combination of tourist guide and interpreter - in the Holy Land, from travellers of different nationalities, social classes, religions, genders and races. Using these reference letters, and the first-hand published and unpublished accounts of the travellers themselves, this book tells the stories of several such tourists, including the intrepid Victorian female traveller, Ellen E. Miller, and an African-American minister, Rev. Charles T. Walker, who had been born into slavery. Between the lines of others' letters, Solomon Negima's remarkable life story also emerges: from a German mission school in Jerusalem, to the British army in the Sudan, to a successful career as a dragoman in Palestine and Syria, and finally to comfortable retirement with his son, Aziz, and daughter, Olinda, at a Mormon mission in Jerusalem. The discovery of this unique scrapbook allows us an insight into the lives of individuals whose histories would otherwise be lost to us, and a new perspective on the history of travel in the Middle East.

First published in 1964. This book is concerned with impressions of Arabic culture on the British before the First World War. More particularly, it is concerned with three Victorian travellers, all of whom knew Arabic culture first hand through their travels in the Middle and Near East, and especially in Arabia, Arabic North Africa, and the seaboard of the eastern Mediterranean. This title will be of interest to students of history.

In this succinct dual biography, Laura Chmielewski demonstrates how the lives of two French explorers - Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Louis Jolliet, a fur trapper - reveal the diverse world of early America. Following the explorers' epic journey through the center of the American continent, Marquette and Jolliet combines a story of discovery and encounter with the insights derived from recent historical scholarship. The story provides perspective on the different methods and goals of colonization and the role of Native Americans as active participants in this complex and uneven process.

In this succinct dual biography, Laura Chmielewski demonstrates how the lives of two French explorers - Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Louis Jolliet, a fur trapper - reveal the diverse world of early America. Following the explorers' epic journey through the center of the American continent, Marquette and Jolliet combines a story of discovery and encounter with the insights derived from recent historical scholarship. The story provides perspective on the different methods and goals of colonization and the role of Native Americans as active participants in this complex and uneven process.

When this book was first published in 1958, Arabia was even then one of the least known corners of the globe. The foreigner was strictly forbidden from entering, except those with the Imam's personal consent, and then under close supervision. Foreigners were only allowed as far as the capital, and what lay beyond was practically unexplored. To Hans Helfritz the only hope of seeing the forbidden area was to make a secret journey, approaching it in disguise by the back door. He decided to reach the borders of the Yemen by a wide detour through the interior, crossing a desert previously considered impassable and still recorded on the maps as a blank. Beginning on the coast at the eastern extremity of the Gulf of Aden, he made his way through the Hadhramaut, the Rub' al Khali and the Yemen to the Red Sea, the first crossing ever of the south-western part of the peninsula. From this journey he brought back a fascinating record of adventure and exploration, together with many wonderful pictures of cities never before photographed.

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.