Showing results by narrator "Andre Stojka" in All Categories

Death in the desert under a relentless sun. This is an eyewitness account of wagon train pioneer families in 1849, who faced the horrifying heat of what is now known as Death Valley, California and survived the ordeal through an act of incredible heroism. It is also a first person account, never before recorded as an audio book, of working the California gold fields, crossing through the Panama jungle and witnessing the horror of slavery in America. It is a unique document of history and adventure. William Lewis Manly lived through these events and wrote a personal account.

The great unknown of the Southwest is conquered by a one-armed man and his crew of adventurers, placing the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon on the map of the American continent. It is a journey no human being had ever made before. Dangerous rapids, narrow canyon walls offering no escape, terrifying river waterfalls, capsized boats, near drowning, lost equipment and disillusioned men are dramatically described by John Wesley Powell, leader of this adventurous party.

A tall ship is trapped on a sandbar in 1885, broadsided by heavy seas and doomed to destruction on a lonely Brazilian Beach. Thus begins an incredible sea odyssey by a North American sea captain, his wife, and two sons. To return his family to safety, Captain Joshua Slocum builds a new boat out of the wreckage of the old. With his family, he sails along the perilous South American coast, crosses the Caribbean Sea, and navigates up the United States coast to Washington, D.C.

In 1884, with a job offer to become City Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Charles Fletcher Lummis determined to walk to his new job from Ohio, covering over 3,500 miles through 8 states and territories. He witnessed and documented the end of the old American West and the beginning of the modern age, which picked new winners and losers. Adventurous author, passionate Indian rights activist, pioneering reporter, workaholic newspaper editor, librarian, poet, anthropologist and archeologist, Charles Fletcher Lummis was a great colorful individualist....

A former American president nearly dies during an ill-planned exploration through the Brazilian Wilderness and down the River of Doubt. Theodore Roosevelt was a naturalist, explorer, author, hunter, governor, soldier and 26th President of the United States.

Daily gunfights, daily murders, frequent public hangings. Welcome to Los Angeles, California in the 1850s. This amazing first-person account of adventures, revolution, history, and tales, Reminiscences of a Ranger, was written by Major Horace Bell, who was there when it happened and wrote this eyewitness account of Los Angeles’ violent transition from a Mexican pueblo to an American city. You’ll learn the beginnings and of political scheming and corruption.

Giant Sea Bats, Land Crabs, Lap Dragons, untouched islands and native villages are visited by Gifford Pinchot the father of modern environmentalism, and Chief of the United States Forest Service under Theodore Roosevelt. Gifford Pinchot, with his family, explores The Galapagos Islands, the Marquesas, the Tuamotu Archipelago and Tahiti in 1929, before the South Seas was changed forever by modern civilization and war.

Join abolitionist Richard Henry Dana as he explores Spanish Cuba in 1859, where kidnapped Black Africans were slaves on vast sugar plantations along with impoverished Chinese coolies suffering under unbreakable eight-year contracts. Dana visited Cuba on a fact-finding mission he calls a vacation voyage. He describes Cuban slavery; explores Cuban society, institutions, and educational systems; and exposes a corrupt prison system, where the more a prisoner pays, the less he is punished.

"I found myself thus afloat, on the skin of a buffalo, in the midst of a wild river."

"Stickeen.... pushed his head past my shoulders, looked down and across, then looked me in the face and began to mutter and whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with words, "Surely, you are not going into that awful place. "As the darkness of a freezing night approaches, an experienced American naturalist and a dog are trapped on an Alaskan Glacier. This is a true story, written by one of the United States' most famous naturalists and explorers.

"I saw the whale ahead of us, coming with twice his ordinary speed, and with tenfold fury and vengeance in his aspect. The surf flew in all directions about him and his course toward us was marked by a white foam which he made with continual violent thrashing of his tail; his head was about half out of water and in that way he came upon and again struck the ship." An angry whale rams and destroys a whale ship in 1820.

A famous naturalist and his photographer wife explore China in 1916, a medieval country torn apart by revolution, the Japanese military, and the onset of World War I. Their goal was to shoot, trap, collect and photograph native animals for display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Traveling by mule train, they find themselves in conflict with the brutal treatment of Chinese women, the Government, the elements, and a closed civilization, controlled by the past.

A wild epic journey by an American with two Inuit companions, struggling to be the first humans to reach the North Pole. After reaching the Pole, the struggle continued with a year-long, near death journey back to civilization, without supplies, competing with animals of the wild without defensive weapons, crossing a shifting sea of ice and struggling for life during the long winter night.

In 1906, without studying navigation, Jack London, his wife Charmian, and a small crew sail to the South Pacific, hoping not to get lost. His adventures and misadventures at sea led him through native uprisings, The Doldrums, and the then unknown sport of surfing. This first person narrative, in its first recording as an audiobook, combines London’s spirit of adventure with his wonderful sense of humor.

Explorer and gifted writer, William Beebe escapes from the violence of World War 1 into the jungle of British Guiana. As a naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, he finds in the jungle a different kind of violence provided by nature. Beebe's curiosity, patience and powers of observation focus on and magnify nature’s raw details revealing the huge drama being played out in the tropical jungle.

A wild adventure on horseback, beyond the Mississippi River into America's far west of 1832. Washington Irving, author of the “The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” joins a group of inexperienced rangers, hunters and an assortment of colorful characters on a trip into the unsettled prairies. Their goal: meeting Native Americans, hunting buffalo and getting in trouble.