History Adventures World

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university—a history major, no less!—he’s reached middle age with a third-grader’s grasp of early America. In fact, he’s mislaid more than a...

In the bestselling tradition of Hampton Sides’s In the Kingdom of Ice, a “gripping adventure tale” (The Boston Globe) recounting Dutch polar explorer William Barents’ three harrowing Arctic expeditions—the last of which resulted in a relentlessly challenging year-long fight for...

In the second novel of the New York Times bestselling Temeraire series, the Napoleonic Wars take Captain Will Laurence and his dragon to China on a perilous mission. “Full of wonderful characters with real heart.”—Peter Jackson When Britain intercepted a French ship and its precious...

War rages on in the second heart-pounding novel in M. H. Ayinde’s relentless epic fantasy series The Invoker Trilogy, a sweeping epic of revenge and rebellion set in a richly drawn world of warring clans and ancestor magic. Tension simmers across Nine Lands. In the capital, the people of...

In 1948, a young Australian mining engineer named Ben Carlin set out to do the impossible: circumnavigate the globe, by land and sea, in a single vehicle. The vehicle in question was an amphibious jeep developed by the U.S. Army, which Carlin christened Half-Safe, after a deodorant slogan. It was a mechanical mongrel that was supposed to move with equal ease across land and water but in practice wasn't much good for either one. Undaunted, Carlin and his wife Elinore set off across the Atlantic Ocean with dreams of fame and fortune, and of carving a small notch in history.

New York Times BESTSELLER In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves. For John...

An exquisite, lyrical foray into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen's murder of journalist Kim Wall—a captivating blend of literary prose, science writing, and true crime "[A] thrilling study of an...

Soon after the first maritime trade routes became operational, seafaring bandits appeared to prey upon the cargo, crews, and ships of others. Crimson Waters traces the history of piracy around the globe, stretching back from its roots in 2500 BCE, through the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and up to the modern-day pirates who still threaten boats along coastlines and on the open seas.

National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, reveals how California’s Gold Rush forged the modern United States—and lit the long fuse to civil war In January 1848, a carpenter spotted flecks of gold in a shallow...

What happens when you actually step away from your life? The New York Times bestselling author of To Shake the Sleeping Self finds out in this meditation on the power of sabbatical and return. On the edge of burnout and frustrated with his shrinking attention span, Jedidiah Jenkins did what so...

*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice* From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a “vivid” and “astonishingly comprehensive account [that] casts world history in a brilliant new light” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and shows how bold explorations and daring trade...

It is the ultimate quest for the ultimate treasure. Chasing a map tattooed on human skin. Across an omniverse of intersecting realities. To unravel the future of the future. Kit Livingstone’s great-grandfather appears to him in a deserted alley during a tumultuous storm. He reveals an...

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War – organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place – 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a...

Fifteen-year-old Valya knows what it feels like to fly. She's a pilot who's always felt more at home soaring through the sky than down on earth. But since the Germans surrounded Stalingrad, Valyas been forced to stay on the ground and watch her city crumble. When her mother is killed during the siege, Valya is left with one burning desire: to join up with her older sister, a member of the famous and feared Night Witches - a brigade of young female pilots.

For almost 500 years, human beings have been finding ways to circle the Earth - by sail, steam, or liquid fuel; by cycling, driving, flying, going into orbit, even by using their own bodily power. The story begins with the first centuries of circumnavigation, when few survived the attempt: In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with five ships and 270 men, but only one ship and 35 men returned, not including Magellan, who died in the Philippines. Starting with these dangerous voyages, Joyce Chaplin takes us on a trip of our own as we travel with Francis Drake, William Dampier, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and James Cook.

The terror of the coming of the Martians is all but a distant memory, a bad dream that has faded with time. All George wants is a quiet suburban life – but at breakfast one morning his newspaper reports the shocking discovery of a Martian cylinder, found intact and unopened, and carefully transported to London. Could it be from the first alien invasion and are Martians still alive inside after more than ten years?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Washington's Spies, "a page-turning thriller" (James M. Scott) about ​one of the greatest heists in history: the U.S. Navy’s clandestine capture of a Nazi U-boat at the climax of World War II. Shortly before noon on June 4, 1944, the sonar...

Byl najczesciej zestrzelanym pilotem II Wojny Swiatowej, francuskim partyzantem, autorem pierwszego wywiadu z Fidelem Castro, laureatem Pulitzera, prywatnym pilotem Juana Perona i odkrywca zaginionej stolicy Majów. Albo nie byl zadnym z nich. Z cala pewnoscia wybieral sie jednak na Ksiezyc. Fascynujaca i przewrotna biografia Tony'ego Halika jest dowodem na to, ze czasem prawdziwe zycie jest bardziej nieprawdopodobne niz najlepsza powiesc.

In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguayo, hunting for sources of gold and silver, and paving the way for Spanish settlements from Santa Fe to Monterey. In strict terms, the expedition failed.

The relationship between man and horse on the Eurasian steppe gave rise to a succession of rich nomadic cultures. Among them were the Mongols of the 13th century - a small tribe, which, under the charismatic leadership of Genghis Khan, created the largest contiguous land empire in history. Inspired by the extraordinary life nomads lead, Tim Cope embarked on a journey that hadn’t been successfully completed since those times.