Explorer Memoirs

British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now, Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words. In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs.

One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley. This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

Edge of the Map is equal parts inspiring, dramatic, and heartbreaking. One of America's greatest high altitude mountaineers, Christine Boskoff was at the top of her career when she and her partner perished in an avalanche in 2006. Principled and humble, Boskoff was also a deeply loved role model in the climbing community.

Roald Amundsen was the most successful polar explorer of his era using sledges, dogs, skis, and ships. He is mainly remembered for being the first man to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911. What is less often remembered is that he was also the first man to reach the North Pole on May 12, 1926, as the leader of the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile expedition in the airship Norge.

If you have ever wondered what is was like to be an explorer in the unspoiled American West of the early 1800s, then this is the audiobook for you. Not only a groundbreaking work of American history by critically acclaimed author Robert M. Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous is also a dramatic story of innovation and survival. Here is your chance to live in the very heart of the American wilderness with legendary trappers and mountain men like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith.

In Campfire Stories: Close Calls, Steven Rinella invites seasoned hunters, anglers, adventurers, and outdoor professionals to share their tales of perilous adventures in the natural world, from run-ins with black bears and grizzlies to bad falls and severe hypothermia.

Gripping and often poetic, Alone Against the North is a classic adventure story of single-minded obsession, physical hardship, and the restless sense of wonder that every explorer has in common. What Shoalts discovered as he paddled downriver was a series of unmapped waterfalls that could easily have killed him. Just as astonishing was the media reaction when he got back to civilization. He was feted by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and congratulated by the Governor General. People were enthralled by Shoalts’s proof that the world is bigger than we think.

Fuzzy-haired, neurotic, cello-playing Catrina is devastated when her lover, Jack, leaves her to go surfing on the other side of the world. Trapped in a dead-end job and torn by his departure, Catrina dreams of running away. But how do you run away when you're flat broke? Luckily, her friend Andrew comes up with a plan: they'll get an old van, turn it into a camper, and busk their way from Norway to Portugal, via the midnight sun. Andrew is one of her oldest friends and they share many of the same passions.

A “thrilling and superbly crafted” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day.

Freeman Dyson is a world-renowned astrophysicist who dreams of exploring the heavens and has designed a spaceship to take him there. His son, George, a brilliant high-school dropout, lives in a tree house and is designing a giant kayak to explore the icy coastal wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

In the tradition of Into the Wild comes an instant classic of outdoor literature, a riveting work of uncommon depth. I’m planning on doing four days in the jungle.... It should be difficult to get lost forever: These were the haunting last words legendary adventurer Roman Dial received from his son, before the 27-year old disappeared into the jungles of Costa Rica. This is Dial's intensely gripping and deeply moving account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son's fate.

Sourced from Pierre-Esprit Radisson’s journals, which are the best firsthand accounts of 17th-century Canada, Bush Runner tells the extraordinary true story of this protean 17th-century figure, a man more trading partner than colonizer, a peddler of goods and not worldview - and with it offers a fresh perspective on the world in which he lived.

During the American Revolution and the border conflicts that followed, Simon Girty's name struck terror into the hearts of U.S. settlers in the Ohio Valley and the territory of Kentucky. Girty (1741-1818) had lived with the Natives most of his life. Scorned by his fellow white frontiersmen as an "Indian lover," Girty became an Indian agent for the British. He accompanied Native raids against Americans, spied deep into enemy territory, and was influential in convincing the tribes to fight for the British.

In Campfire Stories: Narrow Escapes & More Close Calls, storytellers take us from Florida to the Northern Rockies to the Arctic Ocean with wild and true stories, a reminder that the natural world is rugged and unpredictable. Including stories from Steven Rinella and Clay Newcomb, and spearfishing champion Kimi Werner, this immersive audio collection also features tales from listeners who survived falling through the ice, gunshot and arrowhead wounds, hand-to-hoof combat with a deer, and a spearfisherman who made the best shot of his life to save a friend from certain death.

Traverspine is not a place you will find on most maps. A century ago, it stood near the foothills of the remote Mealy Mountains in central Labrador. Today it is an abandoned ghost town, almost all trace of it swallowed up by dark spruce woods that cloak millions of acres. In the early 1900s, this isolated little settlement was the scene of an extraordinary haunting by large creatures none could identify. Strange tracks were found in the woods. Unearthly cries were heard in the night. Sled dogs went missing.

Raymond Ditmars (1876-1942), the first curator of reptiles at New York's famous Bronx Zoo, brought cold-blooded animals to public attention as never before. Through wildly successful books and movies, he inspired a generation of zoologists with his fascination for snakes, insects, and other misunderstood creatures. Ditmars was among the most celebrated naturalists in America. His reptile-collecting trips for the zoo spawned newspaper headlines across the world.

Isaac's Storm meets The Age of Wonder in Lee Sandlin's Storm Kings, a riveting tale of the weather's most vicious monster - the super cell tornado - that recreates the origins of meteorology, and the quirky, pioneering, weather-obsessed scientists who helped change America.

In the annals of seafaring and exploration, there is one name that immediately evokes visions of the open ocean, billowing sails, visiting strange, exotic lands previously uncharted, and civilizations never before encountered - Captain James Cook. Full of realistic action, lush descriptions of places and events, and fascinating historical characters such as King George III and the soon-to-be-notorious Master William Bligh, Dugard's gripping account of the life and death of Captain James Cook is a thrilling story of a discoverer hell-bent on going farther than any man.

New York Times bestselling author Mark Synnott has climbed with Alex Honnold. He’s scaled Mount Everest. He's pioneered big-wall first ascents, including the north-west face of the mile-high Great Trango Tower, and skied monster first descents. But in 2022, he realized there was a dream he’d yet to achieve: to sail the Northwest Passage in his own boat—a feat only four hundred or so sailors have ever accomplished—and in doing so, try to solve the mystery of what happened to legendary nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin and his ships, HMS Erebus and Terror.

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.