Explorer Memoirs

Peter Pond, a fur trader, explorer, and amateur mapmaker, spent his life ranging much farther than Milford, Connecticut, where he was born and died (1740-1807). He traded around the Great Lakes, on the Mississippi and the Minnesota Rivers, in the Canadian Northwest, and was a partner in Montreal’s North West Company. Knowing 18th-century North America on a scale that few others did, Pond drew some of the earliest maps of western Canada. David Chapin presents Pond’s life as part of a generation of traders who came of age between the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution.

Né à Jaffa en Israël, Eli Sharabi a été enlevé le 7 octobre 2023 à son domicile du kibboutz Be'eri. Retenu captif pendant 491 jours, il est devenu la voix, dans diverses enceintes internationales (ONU, rassemblements a Tel.Aviv, rencontres à la Maison Blanche), des otages et martyrs du 7 octobre.

Spaceflight historian Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space. When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century—man...

Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, was Australia’s greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, he led an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. After setting up Main Base at Cape Denision and Western Base on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an extraordinary sledging trek with his companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz. After tragedy struck, Mawson found himself all alone, 160 miles from safety, with next to no food.

A retired law enforcement officer turned pilot and a former math teacher chose to leave their home in Texas for a cabin in the wilderness of Alaska. They left life as they knew it behind to start fresh in the land of the Last Frontier. Their cabin on Cub Lake was only accessible by bush plane in the summer or snow machine during the winter, making life challenging. They knew their learning curve would be steep. What they didn't realize was living on a homestead in the wilderness of Alaska would make them face obstacles they had never experienced before.

An intense and emotional epistolary memoir by one of the world's top ice climbers, born at the confluence of motherhood, adventure, career, and marriage. As one of the world’s leading female professional rock and ice climbers, Burhardt and her husband led globe-trotting, adventure-seeking lives. When she learns that she’s pregnant—with twins—Burhardt at first tries to justify her insistence on pursuing extreme risk in the face of responsibility.

Michael Palin is off again, this time to the seemingly desolate Sahara Desert. There's no easy way across, as he and his team discover on their most challenging expedition yet.

Arguably the greatest extreme skier to ever live, Doug Coombs pioneered hundreds of first descents down the biggest, steepest, most dangerous mountains in the world - from the Grand Teton "Otter Body" in Jackson Hole; to Mount Vinson, the highest point in Antarctica; to far-flung drops such as Wyatt Peak in Kyrgyzstan. He graced magazine covers, wowed moviegoers, became the face of top ski companies, and ascended as the king of big-mountain extreme skiing.

Erik Weihenmayer was born with retinoscheses, a degenerative eye disorder that would leave him blind by the age of 13. But Erik was determined to rise above this devastating disability and lead a fulfilling and exciting life. In this poignant and inspiring memoir, he shares his struggle to push past the limits imposed on him by his visual impairment - and by a seeing world.

Partir sur Compostelle pour trouver les réponses à toutes ses questions. Seule, huit kilos sur le dos, et l'espoir d'en ressortir grandie. Partez sur ses traces, et découvrez le chemin historique de Bayonne à Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle qui s'achèvera au km 0 à Fisterra, dans ce carnet de voyage fait de rencontres atypiques, de questionnements philosophiques et de souvenirs impérissables.

A fourth-generation fisherman, Jake Anderson, grew up in the rich fishing environment of Anacortes, Washington. At age 17, Jake began salmon fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska, and by the age of 25 he was crab fishing in the Bering Sea. Soon after, Jake became a deckhand on the F/V Northwestern and joined the popular television series Deadliest Catch. Aside from fishing, Jake has a harrowing story that has yet to be told. As an avid skateboarder, Jake aspired to become a professional until he was sidelined by injury, addiction, and homelessness.

I met Tony Bourdain in 2001, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, filming an episode of A Cook’s Tour. From that day on, we were comrades in search of new emotions and experiences greater than ourselves. In 2011, he told me to write my story. It took me 14 years to look back, to filter my life through the lens of our 17-year friendship. Tony showed me the way out of my cage, from the weight of being Soviet-born to becoming a citizen of the world. I had the honor of being his travel companion for 10 TV episodes.

River Magic: Tales from a Life on 1000 Rivers takes the listener on an amazing global adventure by river. Mark Angelo, one of the world's most acclaimed paddlers and river conservationists, who has paddled more rivers than perhaps anyone on Earth, recounts a selection of his encounters with amazing animals, big fish, unique cultures, and wild rivers.

At age 47, a mother of two, Debbie Moderow was not your average musher in the Iditarod, but that's where she found herself when, less than 200 miles from the finish line, her dogs decided they didn't want to run anymore. After all her preparation, after all the careful management of her team, and after their running so well for over a week, the huskies balked. But the sting of not completing the race after coming so far was nothing compared to the disappointment Moderow felt in having lost touch with her dogs.

Meet Doctor Ben MacFarlane - a very modern flying doctor. His job is get on a plane and bring patients home after holiday disasters, gap year crises, embarrassing incidents on business trips and all the other things that can go wrong when we head overseas. Holiday SOS is his extraordinary story. It’s a unique medical memoir of the people he helps - and a year in the life of one of the world’s most frequent flyers!

A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen’s career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles. Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica (“gripping”—Sports Illustrated) and Grayson (“wondrous, and unforgettable”—Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer’s life and expeditions.

Jim Donini has been an icon of American climbing for the past fifty years, pushing the boundaries of alpine ascents around the world, and inspiring generations with his achievements. In Survival Is Not Assured, award-winning author Geoff Powter dives into Donini's remarkable life story, exploring his groundbreaking climbs and his tumultuous experiences both on and off the rock.

In Driving Lessons, Christopher B. Strain sets out on a quintessential American road trip, exploring not just the roads and byways of the country but the road trip's place in American culture. Strain dives into the well of American travel writing, illuminating fascinating aspects of the road trip, such as how race, class, and gender shape the experiences of road trippers.

Lynn Schooler had recently lost a dear friend and was feeling his marriage slipping away from him when he set out on a daring journey - first by boat, then on foot - into the Alaskan wilderness to clear his head. His solo expedition, recounted in Walking Home, is filled with the awe and danger of being on one's own in the wild, being battered by the elements and even, for two harrowing days, becoming the terrified quarry of a grizzly bear. But the formidable, lonely landscape is also rich with human stories....

Mawson's Will is the dramatic story of what Sir Edmund Hillary calls "the most outstanding solo journey ever recorded in Antarctic history." For weeks in Antarctica, Douglas Mawson faced some of the most daunting conditions ever known to man: blistering wind, snow, and cold; loss of his companion, his dogs and supplies, the skin on his hands and the soles of his feet; thirst, starvation, disease, snowblindness - and he survived.