Showing titles in Expeditions & Discoveries

They’re widely known as raiders, pirates, invaders, and savages, but despite their fearsome reputation (or perhaps because of it), Vikings continue to fascinate us today. And it’s not hard to see why. They were brave, rebellious, and fierce fighters—plus, based on Hollywood’s portrayals, they were quite good-looking. While media highlights their violence and toughness, there’s more to the Viking culture than just conquering lands. The Vikings were not just warriors but also traders, explorers, and lawmakers....

For more than 5,000 years, the seas have challenged, rewarded and punished the brave sailors who set forth to explore it. This history of the seas and sailing tells the remarkable story of those individuals—whether they lived to tell the tale themselves or not. From the early Polynesian seafarers and the first full circumnavigations of the globe, to explorers picking their way through the coral reefs of the West Indies, this audiobook tells the compelling story of life at sea that lies behind man's search for new lands, new trade, conquest and uncharted waters.

In Polish: A stunning story of the trailblazing expedition into the heart of the most dangerous jungle in the world, full of venomous snakes, jaguars, and sandflies which spread infections. This is were the legendary, cursed City of the Monkey God was supposed to be. Many years of expeditions didn't show any results, until Steve Elkins, a documentalist, discoverer, and laureate of the Emmy Award, managed to find the position of the mistery Pre-Columbian city thanks to the use of modern laser technology.

The Netherlands had a great century in the 1600s, until it all ended about three-fourths of the way along. Trading was all around; business was good. Their vast empire that reached across the world made money from spices, raw materials, metals, and so much more, with an extensive network of ships and merchants, and an entire army fleet. The Dutch Golden Era was a time in Dutch history varying from about 1588 (the start of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the "Catastrophe Year"), throughout which Dutch trade, science, and art, and the Dutch armed force, were amongst the world's best.

Einstein’s Fridge tells the story of how scientists uncovered the least known and yet most consequential of all the sciences and learned to harness the power of heat and ice. The laws of thermodynamics govern everything from the behaviour of atoms to that of living cells, from the engines that power our world to the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Not only that, but thermodynamics explains why we must eat and breathe, how the lights come on and ultimately how the universe will end.

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation, making history’s first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole—which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship.

Amid all the foreign adventurers that throng to Nepal to scale the world's highest peaks, there exists a small tribe of mountain people at the foothills of Himalayas. Sherpa tells their story. It's the story of endeavour and survival at the roof of the world. The story dives into their culture and tells of their existence at the edge of life and death. It traces their story pre- and post-mountaineering revolution, their evolution as climbing crusaders with never previously published stories from the most notable and incredible Sherpas of the last 50 years.

The heroes of each generation reflect the conditions, priorities, and goals of the era in which they reside. In the United States and throughout Europe, the wilderness explorer enjoyed widespread public adulation long before leading sports figures, rock stars, and astronauts of later decades. The ingenuity of the Industrial Revolution gave way to early manned flight, and other breakthroughs in communication and travel.

Published to coincide with the centenary of the first expeditions to reach the South Pole, An Empire of Ice presents a fascinating new take on Antarctic exploration. Retold with added information, it's the first book to place the famed voyages of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, his British rivals Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton, and others in a larger scientific, social, and geopolitical context.

During his life and even after his death, Captain William Kidd’s name was known around England and the American colonies. He was infamous for the very crime for which he was hanged, piracy. This book by Rebecca Simon dives into the details of the two-year manhunt for Captain Kidd and the events that ensued afterward. Captain Kidd was hanged in 1701, and from that sprung a massive hunt for all pirates led by the British during a period known as the Golden Age of Piracy. Ironically, public executions only led to pirates’ growth in popularity and interest.

This enthralling true story of maritime tragedy and visionary science begins with a disaster to rival the sinking of the Titanic.In September 1857, the S.S. Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying passengers returning from the gold fields of California, went down during a hurricane off the Carolina coast. More than 400 men--and 21 tons of gold--were lost. In the 1980s, a maverick engineer named Tommy Thompson set out to find the wreck and salvage its treasure from the ocean floor.

Blind Descent explores both the brightest and darkest aspects of the timeless human urge to discover - to be first. It is also a thrilling epic about a pursuit that makes even extreme mountaineering and ocean exploration pale by comparison.

Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour—10 times faster than a rifle bullet—Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity—the first human to leave the planet. Beyond tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its 60th anniversary. It happened at the height of the Cold War as the US and USSR confronted each other across an Iron Curtain.

The year is 1735. Twelve unruly men board ships bound for South America. Their mission? To discover the true shape of the Earth. They will be exposed to a wilderness of dangers none can imagine. The survivors won't return for 10 years. An almost forgotten moment in history, a story for our times, this is the true story of the mission to discover the shape of the Earth.

Richard Henry Dana called this book a "a voice from the sea". It had an influence on both Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville, both of whom sang its praises. Dana was a law student at Harvard College who decided, in 1834, to take a break from his studies in order to experience the "real world" by signing on as a common sailor for a two year voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. He kept a journal which he turned into a book after the voyage.

It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over, and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet's final frontier? The night before the expedition's flagship launched, Billy Gawronski - a skinny, first-generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business - jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it?

What makes a good explorer? Adaptability, ambition, stamina, self-confidence, curiosity, optimism, authority—and fundraising ability. Though few of us will ever have to face a charging elephant, or survive solely on penguin stew, when it comes to project management, crisis aversion, or any number of everyday problems, there is much we can learn from the larger-than-life tales of the world's most famous adventurers.

In 1271 a young Italian merchant named Marco Polo embarked on a groundbreaking expedition from Venice, through the Middle East and Central Asia to China. His extraordinary reports of his experiences introduced medieval Europe to an exotic new world of emperors and concubines, amazing cities, huge armies, unusual spices and cuisine, and imperial riches. Marco Polo also revealed the wonders of Xanadu, the summer capital of Mongol emperor Kublai Khan.

Looking out his porch window one spring morning, Adam Shoalts spotted a majestic peregrine falcon flying across the neighbouring fields near Lake Erie. Each spring, falcons migrate from southernmost Canada to remote arctic mountains. Grabbing his backpack and canoe, Shoalts resolved to follow the falcon’s route north on an astonishing 3,400-kilometre journey to the Arctic.

Battle of the Artic follows not just the Royal Navy and its successful efforts to shepherd ships through storms and past floating icebergs. It also tells a part of history which has never been properly understood by the British public. It involves the forgotten heroes of the Arctic convoys, the officers, armed guards and the ordinary civilian seamen, mostly from Britain and America, but also from Holland, Norway, Russia and Poland.