The extraordinary sixty-thousand-year history of how the Pacific islands were settled. 'Takes readers on a narrative odyssey' Wall Street Journal, Books of the Year 'Highlights a dizzying burst of new research' The Economist 'A refreshing addition to the canon of literature that contemplates Oceanic navigation' Noelle Kahanu 'I would not be surprised if, after reading this masterpiece, many readers are compelled to take up voyaging themselves' Science Magazine Thousands of islands, inhabited by a multitude of different peoples, are scattered across the vastness of the Pacific. The first European explorers to visit Oceania, from the sixteenth century on, were astounded and perplexed to find populations thriving so many miles from the nearest continents. Who were these people and where did they come from? In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between Asia and the Americas. Drawing on the latest research, including insights gained from linguistics, archaeology, and the re-enactment of voyages, Thomas provides a dazzling account of these long-distance migrations, the sea-going technologies that enabled them, and the societies that they left in their wake.

A new edition of a great, underappreciated classic of our time.

Beryl Markham's West with the Night is a true classic, a book that deserves the same acclaim and readership as the work of her contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Isak Dinesen.

If the first responsibility of a memoirist is to lead a life worth writing about, Markham succeeded beyond all measure. Born Beryl Clutterbuck in the middle of England, she and her father moved to Kenya when she was a girl, and she grew up with a zebra for a pet; horses for friends; baboons, lions, and gazelles for neighbors. She made money by scouting elephants from a tiny plane. And she would spend most of the rest of her life in East Africa as an adventurer, a racehorse trainer, and an aviatrix―she became the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America, the first woman to fly solo east to west across the Atlantic. Hers was indisputably a life full of adventure and beauty.

And then there is the writing. When Hemingway read Markham's book, he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins: "She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer . . . [She] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers . . . It is really a bloody wonderful book."

With a new introduction by Sara Wheeler―one of Markham's few legitimate literary heirs―West with the Night should once again take its place as one of the world's great adventure stories.

Britain is going to Mars. Beagle 2 - a space lander shaped like a clam and no larger than a portable barbecue - is about to make history. Named after HMS Beagle, the ship in which Charles Darwin travelled around the world, Beagle 2 has hitched a ride aboard the European Space Agency Mars Express. On reaching the red planet, this tiny British space probe is designed to answer one big question: is there, or was there, life on Mars?;In 'Beagle', Colin Pillinger explores the remarkable similarities between these two historic ships, the sailing ship and the spaceship, and their great voyages of exploration. Both were at the forefront of technology for their respective generations. HMS Beagle led to the discovery of the secret of life on Earth - can Beagle 2 possibly do the same for Mars?

With original primary source documents, this anthology brings readers into the vast unknown 19th-century American West-through the eyes of the explorers who saw it for the first time. This volume brings together book excerpts, maps, and illustrations from 12 explorers from the 19th century, highlighting their lives and contributions. Arranged chronologically, the 10 chapters focus on individual explorers, with biographies and background information about and document excerpts from each person. The chapters offer analyses of each document's relevance to the historical period, geographic knowledge, and cultural perspective. This guide shares the important contributions from explorers like Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, Jedediah Smith, James P. Beckwourth, John C. Fremont, Susan Magoffin, and John Wesley Powell. It also nurtures readers' historical literacy by modeling historians' methods of analyzing primary sources. Readers will see new and familiar events from different perspectives, including that of a woman traveling along the Santa Fe Trail, one of the most famous African American mountain men, and a Civil War veteran, among many others. Collects primary source materials such as journal entries, book excerpts, and maps from various 19th-century American explorers, enabling readers to "discover" the vast unknown American West, as seen for the first time by those of European descent Includes a topical guide to aid readers in cross-referencing entries Presents illustrations and photographs as well as original textual documents and maps

Rene Caillie was the first European who penetrated to Timbuctoo and returned to communicate the information he had collected. This account was first published in 1830, and records observations of a journey of 4500 miles, of which 3000 were hitherto unknown to Europeans.

"The best book so far to answer the question 'Who discovered America?'...This important, spell-binding report replaces sugar-coated myths about Columbus's invasion of America with indispensable history." --Publishers Weekly

"A thoughtful and challenging consideration of the many voyagers who might have reached the Americas by sea before the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria...Well informed and well written, always provocative if not conclusive, this is revisionist history with a vengeance --and about time, too." --Kirkus Reviews

"Persuasively and emphatically disputes the fact that Columbus actually discovered America...A long-overdue tribute to a score of forgotten and disregarded explorers, adventurers, and sailors. Highly recommended..." --Booklist

Patrick Huyghe is a writer, editor, and television producer. He spent two decades writing about science for magazines from Omni to Discover; produced television documentaries for WGBH and WNET; and is the author of nine books.

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.

The North Face of the Eiger was long notorious as the most dangerous climb in the Swiss Alps, one that had claimed the lives of numerous mountaineers. In February 1966, two teams - one German, the other British-American - aimed to climb it by a new direct route. Astonishingly, the two teams knew almost nothing about each other's attempt until both arrived at the foot of the face. The race was on. John Harlin led the four-man British-American team and intended to make an Alpine-style dash for the summit as soon as weather conditions allowed. The Germans, with an eight-man team, planned a relentless Himalayan-style ascent, whatever the weather. The authors were key participants as the dramatic events unfolded. Award-winning writer Peter Gillman, then twenty-three, was reporting for the Telegraph, talking to the climbers by radio and watching their monumental struggles from telescopes at the Kleine Scheidegg hotel. Renowned Scottish climber Dougal Haston was a member of Harlin's team, forging the way up crucial pitches on the storm-battered mountain. Chris Bonington began as official photographer but then played a vital role in the ascent. Eiger Direct, first published in 1966, is a story of risk and resilience as the climbers face storms, frostbite and tragedy in their quest to reach the summit. This edition features a new introduction by Peter Gillman.

In his classic text, two-time Pulitzer Prize—winner John Noble Wilford recounts the history of cartography from antiquity to the space age. With this revised edition, Wilford brings the story up to the present day, as he shows the impact of new technologies that make it possible for cartographers to go where no one has been before, from the deepest reaches of the universe (where astronomers are mapping time as well as space) to the inside of the human brain. These modern-day mapmakers join the many earlier adventurers–including ancient Greek stargazers, Renaissance seafarers, and the explorers who mapped the American West–whose exploits shape this dramatic story of human inventiveness and limitless curiosity.

Durante el tiempo que paso en las islas portuguesas de Porto Santo y Madeira, Cristobal Colon, un navegante de Genova, estuvo a cargo de un marinero moribundo, de Castilla, cuya carabela habia sido llevado por la corriente del Golfo de Guinea a un mar remoto, posiblemente el Caribe. En su lecho de muerte, este hombre habia dicho Columbus el secreto de algunas tierras donde habian llegado siberianos durante el Pleistoceno y algunos documentos sobre algunos de los posibles viajes anteriores. Este marinero aseguro que esas tierras que habia logrado llevado por las corrientes eran los mismos que se referia. Cuando Colon llego a Espana, trato de convencer a la Corona de Castilla de sus proyectos, que eran precisamente los mismos que Isaias habia profetizado como destino para obtener los limites de los horizontes. Durante su descripcion, Columbus parecia tan seguro de que tanto la Reina Isabel y el Rey Fernando se preguntaron si el estaba tratando de ocultar una realidad probada, un misterio que llevo a su tumba. Colon les pidio una subvencion, Fernando el Catolico le comento que las arcas estaban vacias en ese momento, ya que solo habia subyugado toda Al-Andalus tras la toma de Granada, por lo que la derrota del rey nazari mas mala suerte, Boabdil, conocido como "el pequeno hombre." Debido a que los exploradores espanoles del siglo 15, Espana se convirtio en la mayor potencia comercial entre los paises europeos. Ellos construyeron asentamientos que duraria hasta tres siglos mas tarde, en un proceso expansivo de colonizacion, hasta la perdida del poder espanol en los territorios de la decada de 1810, cuando comenzo la Independencia. Desde finales del siglo 18, hasta principios del siglo 19, el Oeste fue testigo de una serie de revoluciones en cadena que afecto a Europa occidental y America del espanol al mismo tiempo. La invasion de Napoleon, Francisco de Miranda, Simon Bolivar, logias masonicas, junto con envidias, traiciones o amantes hacen que este libro sea una emocionante aventura basada en la verdadera historia.

In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.
Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team, as well as their family members and supporters, to an exhibition game in Chile had crashed somewhere deep in the Andes. He soon learned that many were dead or dying--among them his own mother and sister. Those who remained were stranded on a lifeless glacier at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, with no supplies and no means of summoning help. They struggled to endure freezing temperatures, deadly avalanches, and then the devastating news that the search for them had been called off.
As time passed and Nando's thoughts turned increasingly to his father, who he knew must be consumed with grief, Nando resolved that he must get home or die trying. He would challenge the Andes, even though he was certain the effort would kill him, telling himself that even if he failed he would die that much closer to his father. It was a desperate decision, but it was also his only chance. So Nando, an ordinary young man with no disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snow-capped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to find help.
Thirty years after the disaster Nando tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. "Miracle in the Andes"--a first person account of the crash and its aftermath--is more than a riveting tale of true-life adventure: it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Published in 1542 to an astonished and captivated public, Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition tells the unforgettable story of a sixteenth-century soldier turned explorer who, along with three other survivors of a shipwreck, makes his way across an unknown geographic and cultural landscape. This Norton Critical Edition is based on David Frye's new translation. It is accompanied by Ilan Stavan's introduction, the translator's preface, the editor's detailed explanatory annotations, and a map tracing Cabeza de Vaca's journey from Florida to California. "Alternative Narratives and Sequels" enriches the reader's understanding of and appreciation for Cabeza de Vaca's chronicle, which can be read both as historical record and as fiction (Cabeza de Vaca having written his account years after the events took place). Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdez's General and Natural History of the Indies (1535) provides a different account of the same journey, while sequels can be found in a 1539 letter from the Viceroy of New Spain to the Emperor and in Fray Marcos de Niza's Relacion on the Discovery of the Kingdom of Cibola (1539). The Spanish explorers, soldiers, and missionaries of the period saw the New World as a place of enchantment, riches, and opportunity. This spirit is captured in "Contexts" with documents including a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus to a potential benefactor of his future travels; Hernan Cortes's 1520 letter from Mexico; and an excerpt from Fray Bartolome's Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542). A selection from Miguel Leon Portilla's Broken Spears provides readers with the viewpoint of the vanquished. "Criticism" includes five major assessments of Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition spanning eighty years. Contributors include Morris Bishop, Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, Paul Schneider, Andres Resendez, and Beatriz Rivera-Barnes. A Chronology, Selected Bibliography, and Index are also included.

Access to new plants and consumer goods such as sugar, tobacco, and chocolate from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards would massively change the way people lived, especially in how and what they consumed. While global markets were consequently formed and provided access to these new commodities that increasingly became important in the 'Old World', especially with regard to the establishment early modern consumer societies. This book brings together specialists from a range of historical fields to analyse the establishment of these commodity chains from the Americas to Europe as well as their cultural implications.

The Italian airship designer and pilot Umberto Nobile had flown to the North Pole and beyond in 1926. He resolved to go back to the Arctic with a new airship in 1928. There were areas of the Arctic that had not been explored and it was believed that new lands might be there to be discovered. The expedition had geographical and scientific aims, but the political environment was also an important motivator. Mussolini and his Fascist party had come to power in 1922 and a successful expedition to the Arctic would be good propaganda. Instead, however, the 'Italia' was to disappear on its return from Greenland, on 25 May 1928. By the time the expedition was over, eight of the crew and nine attempted rescuers were dead and scores more had been put in harm's way. This is the story of the search for Nobile, the 'Italia', and his crew, and the many men from many countries who searched for them.

In this stimulating and timely book, Scott Bailey, an American teaching Russian and Eurasian history in Japan, traces the history of the dynamic Russian Geographical Society, which carried out major research expeditions to Central Eurasia during the second half of the nineteenth century. The immediate goal of its expeditions was to collect ethnographic, geographic, and natural-scientific information on these regions and their peoples. Their wider benefits established and extended Russia's imperial control in Central Eurasia, including some regions under direct or indirect Chinese control. These expeditions served the acquisition of social and scientific information to benefit the Russian Empire's colonization efforts. Their leaders were often elites trained in ethnography, geography, and natural science subjects, and a major objective of this book is to give a fuller picture of the diverse biographies of these figures, not all of whom were Russian or European males. In the `Wild Countries' moves chronologically from the founding of the Russian Geographical Society in 1845 to the beginning of the revolutionary period in Russia in 1905. During these decades, research missions became more overtly "imperial" and coincided with the consolidation of Russian hegemony over Central Eurasia and an increasing Russian interest in territories in the western and northern regions of the Chinese Q'ing Empire. The book also addresses wider moves toward imperial projects worldwide.

Upon that Mountain is the first autobiography of the mountaineer and explorer Eric Shipton. In it, he describes all his pre-war climbing, including his Everest bids of the 1930s, and his second Karakoram survey in 1939, when he returned to Snow Lake to complete the mapping of the ranges flanking the Hispar and Choktoi glacier systems around the Ogre. Crossing great swathes of the Himalaya, the book, like so many of Shipton's works, is both entertaining and an important addition to the mountain literature genre. It captures an important period in mountaineering history - that just before the Second World War - an ends on an elegiac note as Shipton describes his last evening at the starkly-beautiful snow lake, before he returns to a 'civilisation' about to embark on a cataclysmic war.

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

A journey - both historical and contemporary - among the fantastical landscapes, beguiling creatures and isolated tribes of the world's fourth island: Madagascar. An improbable world beckons. We think we know Madagascar but it's too big, too eccentric, and too impenetrable to be truly understood. If it was stretched out across Europe, the islands would reach from London to Algiers, and yet its road network is barely bigger than tiny Jamaica's. There is no evidence of any human life until about 10,000 years ago, and, when eventually people settled, it was migrants from Borneo - 3,700 miles away - who came out on top. As well as visiting every corner of Madagascar, John Gimlette journeys deep into its past in order to better understand how Madagascar became what it is today. Along the way, he meets politicians, sorcerors, gem prospectors, militiamen, rioters, lepers and the descendants of seventeenth-century pirates.

This seminal study explores the national, imperial and indigenous interests at stake in a major survey expedition undertaken by the German Schlagintweit brothers, while in the employ of the East India Company, through South and Central Asia in the 1850s. It argues that German scientists, lacking in this period a formal empire of their own, seized the opportunity presented by other imperial systems to observe, record, collect and loot manuscripts, maps, and museological artefacts that shaped European understandings of the East. Drawing on archival research in three continents, von Brescius vividly explores the dynamics and conflicts of transcultural exploration beyond colonial frontiers in Asia. Analysing the contested careers of these imperial outsiders, he reveals significant changes in the culture of gentlemanly science, the violent negotiation of scientific authority in a transnational arena, and the transition from Humboldtian enquiry to a new disciplinary order. This book offers a new understanding of German science and its role in shaping foreign empires, and provides a revisionist account of the questions of authority and of authenticity in reportage from distant sites.

This vivid book retells the story of Captain Cook's great voyages in the South Seas, focusing on the encounters between the explorers and the island peoples they "discovered." While Cook and his men were initially confounded by the Polynesians, they were also curious. Cook and his crew soon formed friendships-and often more intimate relationships-with the islanders. The islanders, who initially were not certain if the Englishmen were even human, came to experiment with Western customs and in some cases joined the voyagers on their expeditions. But familiarity quickly bred contempt. Shipboard discipline was threatened by these new relationships, and the culture of the islands was also changed forever. Captain Cook, initially determined to act as an enlightened leader, saw his resolve falter during the third voyage. Amicable relations turned hostile, culminating in Cook's violent death on the shores of Hawaii. In this masterful account of Cook's voyages, Anne Salmond-a preeminent authority on the history of the south seas-reimagines two worlds that collided in the eighteenth century, and the enduring impact of that collision.

Fishermen from New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces once made a reputation by driving their schooners under a full press of sail in a howling gale on their run into market, fueling the popular imagination with romantic images of Captains Courageous. But by the early twentieth century, they seemed destined to go the way of workers ashore, who had been displaced by new technologies. Then fate intervened in the form of the International Fishermen's Races. Clouds of White Sail tells the story of how schoonermen were able to reignite the public's love affair with the beauty of their ships and the romance of the sea and hold onto their way of life in a way that few other workers were able. Michael Wayne Santos's narrative takes a page from the fo'c'sle traditions from which he draws; like the men whose saga he immortalizes, he not only loves a good story but also knows how to tell one.

In late July 1776, fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Francisco Velez de Escalante set out from Santa Fe to chart a route to the new Spanish missions in California. The Fransiscans planned to scout the country for mineral wealth and locate the Ute and Navajo tribes for conversion. In present-day Utah, however, the dangers of starvation and hypothermia forced them to turn back. By November the friars were reduced to survival mode: stymied by the raging Colorado River, they had to kill their horses for food. In this adventure-history, David Roberts travels the Spaniards' forgotten route, using Escalante's first-person report as his guide. Blending personal and historical narrative, he relives the glories, catastrophes and courage of this desperate journey.