Aviation in the 1950s was a positive, exciting sequel to the most destructive war in history. It gave birth to the jet age for passengers, fostering remarkable social changes. Venture into the Stratosphere is a memoir about the exhilaration and challenges in flying the first jetliners. It brings to life a story of diverse elements, such as technical matters in layman's terms, a love story, social interactions, engineering philosophy, the post-war ethos, and the intimate details of the flight deck in routine flying and emergency situations. Readers enjoy the stories that make all their flights fascinating and exciting for years to come!

From the sharp, comic voice of Haunted Inside Passage, Never Cry Halibut is a collection of humorous and thoughtful short essays about hunting and fishing in Alaska. Accompanied by photographs, each story reflects the author's three-decade relationship with the wildest places left in North America as he interacts with brown bears, wolves, wilderness, commercial fishing, and the nearly forgotten act of harvesting food from the wild. From hilarious tales of his nieces outfishing him to reflective ruminations on the human connection to nature, Bjorn captures the liveliness that comes from living so close to the Southeast Alaska wilds.

This is a study of the famous controversy between Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, fellow explorers who quarreled over Speke's claim (which was accurate) to have discovered the source of the Nile in the course of their joint expedition to central Africa in the 1850s. The controversy ended with Speke's shocking death of a gunshot wound, probably accidental, on the eve of a debate by the two men in 1864. In the large literature generated by the controversy, Burton (the better known of the two) has usually had the upper hand. Speke has sometimes been called a cad. On the basis of new evidence and a careful reading of dueling texts by the two men, this study concludes that the case against Speke remains unproven - and that the entire narrative, as it has become ingrained, is an example of the uncertainty to which historical narratives are subject.

As Bob and Mildred Lee, they amazed audiences with their death-defying motorcycle act. In reality, they were Bob and Mildred Restall, parents of three, who balanced their glamorous show-business career with a happy, stable home life. In October 1959, the Restalls embarked on the ultimate family adventure, as Bob led his family to the east coast of Canada to dig for the famous treasure of Oak Island. For nearly six years, they lived without telephone, hydro, or running water, while newspapers and magazines chronicled their attempts to solve the mystery of the Money Pit. On August 17, 1965, their quest ended in tragedy when four men died. This biography, compiled by their daughter, includes material written by each family member. Lyrical descriptions of nature, amusing anecdotes, details of the dig, and numerous photographs help to tell the story. This book is a must for Oak Island enthusiasts.

The first part of his trilogy on the Spanish Empire, Hugh Thomas's Rivers of Gold brings the rise of Spain's global empire vividly to life, capturing the spirit of an ebullient age. Inspired by hopes of both riches and of converting native people to Christianity, the Spanish adventurers of the fifteenth century convinced themselves that an Earthly Paradise existed in the Caribbean. This is the story of the hundreds of conquistadors who set sail on the precarious journey across the Atlantic - taking with them wheat, the horse, the guitar and the wheel as well as guns, malaria and slaves - to create an empire that made Spain the envy of the world. 'Affirms Hugh Thomas's record as one of the most productive and wide-ranging historians of modern times' The New York Times 'Splendid ... bold and strong in its outlines, rich in fasinating details' Paul Johnson, Literary Review 'So steeped is he in the spirit of the time, so familiar with its people and places that we almost feel he must have been there at the time' Sunday Telegraph 'A vivid, dramatic and compelling narrative' Arthur Schlesinger, Jr 'As a historian, Thomas is master of the big picture ... Rivers of Gold sweeps us restlessly on' Jonathan Keates, Spectator 'An epic history of an extraordinary age' Michael Kerrigan, Scotsman Hugh Thomas is the author of, among other books, The Spanish Civil War (1962) which won the Somerset Maugham Award, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994), An Unfinished History of the World (1979) and The Slave Trade (1997). The second volume of his planned trilogy on the Spanish Empire, The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V was published in 2011.

Part adventure, part love story, part inquiry into the mystery of connection between humans and dogs, Fast into the Night is an exquisitely written memoir of a woman, her dogs, and what can happen when someone puts herself in that place between daring and doubt-and soldiers on.

In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea-a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provisions that left the crew weak and debilitated by scurvy.

For nearly a year and a half, the twenty-five men and one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships and danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov and thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges and kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef Land. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears and walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, and mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal-a story that Jon Krakauer calls an "astounding, utterly compelling book," and David Roberts calls "as lean and taut as a good thriller"-is nearly miraculous.

First published in Russia in 1917, Albanov's narrative is here translated into English for the first time. Haunting, suspenseful, and told with gripping detail, In the Land of White Death can now rightfully take its place among the classic writings of Nansen, Scott, Cherry-Garrard, and Shackleton.

In striking counterpoint to the conventional account, Pocahontas is a bold biography that tells the extraordinary story of the beloved Indian maiden from a Native American perspective. Dr. Paula Gunn Allen, the acknowledged founder of Native American literary studies, draws on sources often overlooked by Western historians and offers remarkable new insights into the adventurous life and sacred role of this foremost American heroine. Gunn Allen reveals why so many have revered Pocahontas as the female counterpart to the father of our nation, George Washington.

This volume is about the mythologies of land exploration, and about space and the colonial enterprise in particular. It is an investigation of the presumptions, aesthetics and politics of Australian explorers texts that looks at the journals of John Oxley, Thomas Mitchell, Charles Sturt and Ludwig Leichhardt, and shows that they are not the simple, unadorned observations the authors would have us believe, but, rather, complex networks of tropes. The text argues that contact with Aborigines and the virgin land are occasions of discursive contest, and that, however much explorers construct themselves as monarchs of all they survey, this monarchy is not absolute. This book intention is to scrutinize and undermine the scientific and literary methodology of exploration.

A comprehensive, highly readable reference

This is an authoritative, one-stop resource for essential information on the exploration of North America, from alleged pre-Columbian explorers to polar expeditions in the twentieth century. Completely up-to-date in content and historical approach, the book is divided into seven sections, each covering a major area of exploration. Vivid, narrative entries bring to life early expeditions (e.g., African and Scandinavian voyages, real and apocryphal), voyages of European explorers, Western expeditions, and explorations of the Arctic. From the Atlantic seaboard to the Appalachians to the Mississippi to the northernmost regions, readers will discover the Native nations, geographical features, private and governmental institutions, and settlements that played a role in the history of exploring the continent. Maps, photos, and sidebars with lively first-person accounts from contemporary diaries, reports, and news accounts round out this thorough examination of the numerous adventures taken around the continent.

Michael Golay has published five books on American history, including most recently The Ruined Land. He lives in Exeter, New Hampshire.
John Bowman is the Editor of the Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography and numerous other reference works. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

This volume is about the mythologies of land exploration, and about space and the colonial enterprise in particular. It is an investigation of the presumptions, aesthetics and politics of Australian explorers texts that looks at the journals of John Oxley, Thomas Mitchell, Charles Sturt and Ludwig Leichhardt, and shows that they are not the simple, unadorned observations the authors would have us believe, but, rather, complex networks of tropes. The text argues that contact with Aborigines and the virgin land are occasions of discursive contest, and that, however much explorers construct themselves as monarchs of all they survey, this monarchy is not absolute. This book intention is to scrutinize and undermine the scientific and literary methodology of exploration.

Douglas Robertson has taken his father's classic book, Survive the Savage Sea, as his starting point. The Robertson family set sail from the south of England on their 43-foot schooner, LUCETTE, which was holed by killer whales and sank in the Pacific Ocean. Four adults and two children survived the next 38 days adrift, first in a rubber life raft, then crammed into a 9-foot fiberglass dinghy, before being rescued by a passing Japanese fishing vessel. This is the story of the 18-month voyage of the LUCETTE across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific, and how the family survived their shipwreck. It is a vivid account of the delights and hardships and the excitements and the dangers, experienced by the family both before and after the shipwreck. The author has drawn upon a wealth of other sources, including his own memories of a life-changing experience, to bring us this true story of adventure ? ultimately a very human and humbling tale.

Absorbing.artfully narrat es] a possible course of events in the expedition's demise, based on the one official note and bits of debris (including evidence of cannibalism) found by searchers sent to look for Franklin in the 1850s. Adventure readers will flock to this fine regaling of the enduring mystery surrounding the best-known disaster in Arctic exploration.--Booklist
""A great Victorian adventure story rediscovered and re-presented for a more enquiring time.""--The Scotsman
""A vivid, sometimes harrowing chronicle of miscalculation and overweening Victorian pride in untried technology.a work of great compassion.""--The Australian
It has been called the greatest disaster in the history of polar exploration. Led by Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, two state-of-the-art ships and 128 hand-picked men----the best and the brightest of the British empire----sailed from Greenland on July 12, 1845 in search of the elusive Northwest Passage. Fourteen days later, they were spotted for the last time by two whalers in Baffin Bay. What happened to these ships----and to the 129 men on board----has remained one of the most enduring mysteries in the annals of exploration. Drawing upon original research, Scott Cookman provides an unforgettable account of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, vividly reconstructing the lives of those touched by the voyage and its disaster. But, more importantly, he suggests a human culprit and presents a terrifying new explanation for what triggered the deaths of Franklin and all 128 of his men. This is a remarkable and shocking historical account of true-life suspense and intrigue.

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a "suspenseful" (WSJ) and "adrenaline-fueled" (Outside) entwined narrative of the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world. As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration-set at the world's frozen extremes-lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called "Third Pole," the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth. In the course of one extraordinary year, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson were hailed worldwide at the discovers of the North Pole; Britain's Ernest Shackleton had set a new geographic "Furthest South" record, while his expedition mate, Australian Douglas Mawson, had reached the Magnetic South Pole; and at the roof of the world, Italy's Duke of the Abruzzi had attained an altitude record that would stand for a generation, the result of the first major mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram, where the daring aristocrat attempted K2 and established the standard route up the most notorious mountain on the planet. Based on extensive archival and on-the-ground research, Edward J. Larson weaves these narratives into one thrilling adventure story. Larson, author of the acclaimed polar history Empire of Ice, draws on his own voyages to the Himalaya, the arctic, and the ice sheets of the Antarctic, where he himself reached the South Pole and lived in Shackleton's Cape Royds hut as a fellow in the National Science Foundations' Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. These three legendary expeditions, overlapping in time, danger, and stakes, were glorified upon their return, their leaders celebrated as the preeminent heroes of their day. Stripping away the myth, Larson, a master historian, illuminates one of the great, overlooked tales of exploration, revealing the extraordinary human achievement at the heart of these journeys.

Tom Crean was the indestructible farmer's son from Kerry who sailed on three major expeditions to the unknown Antarctic over a century ago. He was among the few men who served with both Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton. He spent longer on the ice than either and outlived them both. Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary said he was a 'great man of immense strength and endurance and afraid of very little'. Crean was among the last to see Scott alive a few miles from the Pole in 1912. His astonishing 56km trek to save the life of Lt Evans is the finest act of individual heroism in the history of exploration. He returned to the ice months later to bury Scott. Crean was at the heart of historic events on Shackleton's epic Endurance expedition, which featured the 1,200km open boat journey and the desperate march across the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia to rescue marooned comrades. But Tom Crean returned to Ireland during the War of Independence and would never speak about his exploits, taking his incredible story to the grave - until publication of An Unsung Hero, the biography that unearthed his story and saw him rightfully placed among the annals of the great explorers. This newly illustrated edition of the bestselling classic is a must for anyone with a taste for adventure.

The European explorers who dared to face the perils of the unknown have in recent times been shrouded in controversy. No longer esteemed as heroes, except in their homelands, these bold explorers are seen as purveyors of disease, destruction and slavery whose only interests were finding gold, becoming famous and spreading their religious beliefs. But, as the author of this work points out, these explorers broke down long-standing myths and broadened the world's horizons. Beginning with Prince Henry the Navigator's worldly vision of finding a direct sea route to India and concluding with Ferdinand Magellan's quest to be the first man to sail round the world, this work tells the collective story of the numerous explorers who sought to find a path to the exotic spices and other treasures of the Far East. Most of the explorers included in this work were of the same generation and several of them even sailed together. The book also examines the political, social and economic factors that ushered in the age of exploration and had such an impact upon the explorers.

The Franklin Conspiracy is an absorbing account of the single most enigmatic event in Canadian history. In 1845, two British Royal Navy ships, the Erebus and the Terror, commanded by Sir John Franklin, entered the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. Neither ship returned. A fifteen-year search uncovered evidence of unparalleled disaster, but to this day no one knows exactly how the 129 men of the Franklin Expedition met their deaths.

Although the expedition did not run out of food, there is clear evidence of cannibalism. The ships carried two hundred message cylinders with them, yet failed to leave records. Stranger still, an earlier explorer, Thomas Simpson, was reputedly murdered for the "secret of the Northwest Passage." What was this "secret"?

The Franklin Conspiracy is an exhaustively researched, compellingly reasoned answer to that question. The result is a shocking saga of conspiracy, cover-up, and unbelievable secrets.

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.

"Absorbing…artfully narrat[es] a possible course of events in the expedition’s demise, based on the one official note and bits of debris (including evidence of cannibalism) found by searchers sent to look for Franklin in the 1850s. Adventure readers will flock to this fine regaling of the enduring mystery surrounding the best-known disaster in Arctic exploration."--Booklist

"A great Victorian adventure story rediscovered and re-presented for a more enquiring time."--The Scotsman

"A vivid, sometimes harrowing chronicle of miscalculation and overweening Victorian pride in untried technology…a work of great compassion."--The Australian

It has been called the greatest disaster in the history of polar exploration. Led by Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, two state-of-the-art ships and 128 hand-picked men——the best and the brightest of the British empire——sailed from Greenland on July 12, 1845 in search of the elusive Northwest Passage. Fourteen days later, they were spotted for the last time by two whalers in Baffin Bay. What happened to these ships——and to the 129 men on board——has remained one of the most enduring mysteries in the annals of exploration. Drawing upon original research, Scott Cookman provides an unforgettable account of the ill-fated Franklin expedition, vividly reconstructing the lives of those touched by the voyage and its disaster. But, more importantly, he suggests a human culprit and presents a terrifying new explanation for what triggered the deaths of Franklin and all 128 of his men. This is a remarkable and shocking historical account of true-life suspense and intrigue.

Before Sir Ernest Shackleton's exploration of the Antarctic waters in 1914, Captain Roald Amundsen led a courageous team through ice-chocked waters to become the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911. Read the fascinating account of his journey in "The South Pole."

"Roald Amundsen planted the Norwegian flag on the South Pole on December 14, 1911: a full month before Robert Falcon Scott arrived on the same spot. Amundsen's 'The South Pole' is less well-known than his rival's, in part because he is less of a literary stylist, but also, perhaps, because he survived the journey. His book is a riveting first-hand account of a truly professional expedition; Amundsen's heroism is understated, but it is heroism nonetheless."
--"The Times of London," 23 June 2001

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the spring of 1911 two separate expeditions left their respective camps in Antarctica in a desperate bid to achieve the glory of being first to reach the South Pole: a British party, led by Captain R. F. Scott, and a Norwegian one under Captain Roald Amundsen. The South Pole, -- Amundsen's first-hand account of the expedition, -- is a fascinating and highly readable history of the tenacity and perseverance of the age.

"The last of the Vikings," Roald Engebreth Gravning Amundsen was a powerfully built man of over six feet in height, born into a family of merchant sea captains in 1872. In 1903 he navigated the Northwest Passage in a 70-foot fishing boat. Soon afterwards he learned that Ernest Shackleton was setting out on an attempt to reach the South Pole. Shackleton abandoned his quest a mere 97 miles short of the Pole, but Amundsen began preparing his own expedition. Although this was the age of the amateur explorer, Amundsen was a professional: he left little to chance, apprenticed with Inuits, and obsessed over every detail.

On October 18, 1911 Amundsen's party set out from the Bay of Whales, on Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, for their final drive toward the pole. His British counterpart, Robert Falcon Scott, dependent on Siberian ponies rather than on dogs, began his trip three weeks later. While Scott clung fast to the British rule of "No skis, no dogs," Amundsen understood that both were vital to survival. Aided by exceptionally cooperative weather conditions, Amundsen's men passed the point where Shackleton was forced to turn back on December 7, and at approximately 3pm on December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen raised the flag of Norway at the South Pole, one month before Scott's party would arrive.

A polar masterpiece of history and adventure, The South Pole is the stunning first-hand account of one of the greatest success stories in the annals of exploration. Most skillfully Amundsen constructs the expedition's character through its personalitiesthe cast of veteran explorers, scientists, and crewproviding insight not only into Amundsen's philosophy of exploration, but into the classical age of polar explorers.

Africa evokes a deep sense of mystery. It is a place that retains what most of the world has lost: space, roots, traditions, awesome beauty, true wilderness, rare animals, and extraordinary people. In this wonderful and haunting collection of stories, Kuki Gallmann writes of her life in Africa, where every day brings challenge and adventure. African Nights is a treasury of memories, in which fascinating people and places are brought to life. The healing powers Africa can have on those who embrace the land as a place of mystery, superstition, danger, and beauty.

Frank Barr was one of the most interesting of the early aviation pioneers in Alaska. At age 28, the former calvalryman, parachute jumper and test pilot, signed on to a Yukon gold expedition in 1932 as a back up pilot. After the expedition failed to find enough gold, Frank Barr stayed in the north country and spent the rest of his career as a bush pilot. He flew every early plane from the Jenny to the Super Cub, carrying passengers and freight to remote villages in Alaska and the Yukon. In 1948 Barr was elected to the Territorial Senate, and held that seat when in 1955 he one of the 55 Alaskans chosen by the people to write a state constitution. Today Alaska's state constitution is considered one of the best state constitutions ever written. Alaska was admitted to the union in 1959. In his later years he flew bush routes for Alaska Airlines and became manager of the northern division. Even in retirement down in the lower forty-eight states, he conducted tours to Alaska and Mexico until he finally retired for good in 1974.

The last of the major African lakes to be visited by European travelers in the late nineteenth century, Lake Rudolf lies in the eastern arm of the great Rift Valley in present-day northern Kenya, near the Ethiopian border. Also known as Lake Turkana, Lake Rudolf is a large saltwater body two hundred miles long and forty miles wide. Fed by the Omo River that flows south from the Ethiopian highlands, it is surrounded by an inhospitable landscape of extinct volcanoes, wind-driven semidesert, and old lava flows. Because of the greenish hue of its waters, it has long been called the Jade Sea."Quest for the Jade Sea" examines the fascinating story of colonial competition around this remote lake. Pascal James Imperato's account yields important insights into European colonial policies in East Africa in the late nineteenth century and how these policies came into conflict with a powerful indigenous and independent African state, Ethiopia, which itself was engaged in imperial expansion.Although the chief competitors for the lake included the British, Italians, the French, Russians, and Ethiopians, its colonial fate was decided by Great Britain and Ethiopia. The role of Ethiopia as a late nineteenth-century colonial power unfolds as Imperato provides unique insights and analyses of Ethiopian colonial policy and its effects on the peoples who inhabited the region of the lake.As well as examining the political and diplomatic aspects of colonial competition for Lake Rudolf, "Quest for the Jade Sea" focuses on the expeditions that traveled there. Many of these were the field expressions of colonial policy; others were undertaken in the interest of scientific and geographical discovery. Whatever theimpetus, their success required courage and much suffering on the part of those who led them. Whether as willing agents of larger colonial designs, soldiers intent on promoting their military careers, or explorers who wished to advance scientific knowledge, expedition leaders left behind not only fascinating chronicles of their experiences and discoveries but also parts of the larger story of colonial competition around an East African lake.