A harsh and icy land isolated at the far southern reaches of the globe, Antarctica is the most recently discovered of the continents. Until the 1800s, no humans had ever set foot upon its shores. Today, it remains mostly uninhabited, but it is far from empty. Readers will meet the unique plants and animals that call this frozen continent home, explore its unique history, examine the environmental concerns it embodies, and much more. Features include...

Chronicles the 1912 expeditions to Antarctica, including those by Robert Scott, Roald Amundsen, Nobu Shirase, Wilhelm Filchner, and Douglas Mawson. "Chris Turney shows how their discoveries marked the dawn of a new age in our understanding of the natural world. He makes use of original and exclusive unpublished archival material, and weaves in the latest scientific findings to show how we might reawaken the public's passion for discovery and exploration."...

"The human story has always been one of perseverance--often against remarkable odds. The most astonishing survival tale of all might be that of 16th-century Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew of sixteen, who ventured farther north than any Europeans before and, on their third polar exploration, lost their ship off the frozen coast of Nova Zembla to unforgiving ice. The men would spend the next year fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing...

"A fascinating new history of America, told through the stories of a diverse cast of ten extraordinary-and often overlooked-adventurers, from Sacagawea to Sally Ride, who pushed the boundaries of discovery and determined our national destiny"--

A blend of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester's Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know. For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until...

The Karluk set out in 1913 in search of an undiscovered continent, with the largest scientific staff ever sent into the Arctic. Soon after, winter had begun, they were blown off course by polar storms, the ship became imprisoned in ice, and the expedition was abandoned by its leader. Hundreds of miles from civilization, the castaways had no choice but to find solid ground as they struggled against starvation, snow blindness, disease, exposure—and...

"For a long time, most people believed that Christopher Columbus was the first explorer to 'discover' America--the first to make a successful round-trip voyage across the Atlantic. But in recent years, as new evidence has come to light, our understanding of history has changed. We know now that Columbus was among the last explorers to reach the Americas, not the first"--Jacket.

Admiral of the Ocean Sea is Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison's classic biography of the greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus. It is written with the insight, energy, and authority that only someone who had himself sailed in Columbus' path to the New World could muster. Morison undertook this expedition in a 147-foot schooner and a 47-foot ketch, the dimensions of these craft roughly matching those of Columbus' Santa Maria and Niña.

...

The tragic story of Columbus's last expedition to the new world.

A comprehensive, highly readable reference This is an authoritative, one-stop resource for essential information on the exploration of North America, from alleged pre-Columbian explorers to polar expeditions in the twentieth century. Completely up-to-date in content and historical approach, the book is divided into seven sections, each covering a major area of exploration. Vivid, narrative entries bring to life early expeditions (e.g., African and...