Showing titles in Expeditions & Discoveries

Im Juni 1799 brach Alexander von Humboldt zu seiner legendären Forschungsreise auf, die ihn quer durch Süd- und Mittelamerika führte. Es war die Verwirklichung eines lang gehegten Traums – und zugleich eine Expedition, die Geschichte schrieb. Rund zweihundert Jahre später folgte der Autor Werner Biermann Humboldts Route. Genau wie die damalige Expedition passierte er die gefährlichen Katarakte am Orinoko, durchquerte den Dschungel und bestieg die Gipfel der Anden.

On January 2, 1678, a fleet of French ships sank off the Venezuelan coast. This proved disastrous for French naval power in the region, and sparked the rise of a golden age of piracy. Tracing the lives of fabled pirates like the Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, and Jean...

El filósofo Pedro Insua explora con ideas y datos la desconocida línea salmantina que va desde los descubrimientos náuticos de Colón a los debates morales de Francisco de Vitoria sobre la licitud de la conquista de América. La ciudad castellana se elevó como el faro moral e ideológico para un imperio que domesticó océanos e hizo suyo todo un continente. Los sabios congregados en torno a Salamanca sentaron las bases de la astronomía moderna, la física, el derecho internacional y hasta la economía.

Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of more than thirty thousand. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history. Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of life.

Breaking All The Rules: The Inside Story of the New Race traces the origins of a second Space Race that began at the end of the original 1960s US-Soviet space race and eventually led to SpaceX and the explosive growth in commercial space being seen today. The story covers how this revolution began with a band of misfit engineers and scientists and the inside story of how this was eventually ignited with the money and vision of billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson.

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...

*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...

In 1862, ambitious scientist James Glaisher set out to do the impossible: ascend higher into the skies than ever before to establish his groundbreaking research. Glaisher’s death-defying journey forms the story of the major motion picture The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne as Glaisher and Felicity Jones as his balloon companion, Amelia Wren. Written in his own words, The Aeronauts chronicles Glaisher’s incredible flights and discoveries first hand, as well as his observations on the pioneers who came before and inspired him.

In Cities of Gold: Legendary Kingdoms, Quixotic Quests, and Fantastic New World Wealth, Bill Yenne takes the listener from the rainforests and mountains of Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, and Guiana to the deserts and peaks of Mexico and the United States to tell the extraordinary, and often brutal story of how the search for mysterious New World riches fueled the exploration of an unknown hemisphere for hundreds of years.

When Johnson went to work for the US Antarctic Program (devoted to scientific research and education in support of the national interest in the Antarctic), he figured he'd find adventure, beauty, penguins, and lofty-minded scientists. Instead he found boredom, alcohol, and bureaucracy. As a dishwasher and garbage man at McMurdo Station, Johnson quickly shed his illusions about Antarctica.

In California, in a mill race on an undistinguished stream, an astonishing discovery was made. It was gold. Gold said to be so plentiful that it just lay there waiting to be picked up. Nuggets of gold that you could just bend down and put in your pocket. Big nuggets, some weighing six ounces or more. A six ounce nugget was worth $120 in 1849. Today? $3,000 in today’s dollars!

Everybody imagines the world's most interesting man to be a fictional, gray-haired lothario who drinks Mexican beer and boasts of his legendary exploits. But what if a man like this really lived? It turns out he did, and there were two of them--both Victorian explorers.

An eminent scholar finds a new American history in the Hispanic past of our diverse nation. The United States is still typically conceived of as an offshoot of England, with our history unfolding east to west beginning with the first English settlers in Jamestown. This view overlooks the significance of America's Hispanic past. With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater. This absorbing narrative begins with the explorers and conquistadores who planted Spain's first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida, and the Southwest.

On May 25, 1961, less than two months after a Soviet cosmonaut had made the very first space flight, President John F. Kennedy told Congress, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

From the late eighth century to somewhere around the middle of the 11th century, the history of Europe was dominated by the people who have become known as the Vikings. The Vikings were among the first global explorers who established territory that stretched from North America in the west to Constantinople in the east, and from the frigid wastes of the Arctic in the north to the warm shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the south.

Discover the extraordinary history and thrilling frontiers of exploration with this guide from The Explorers Club, the esteemed home of the world's most prominent explorers. The discovery of the North and South Poles. The summiting of Everest. The moon landing. The (largely unknown) birth of...

Don't think that because it is such a small country with only about 17 million people, it should be neglected. The Netherlands has a long history, with a high influence on our cultures, trading routes, the stock market, business, and art. The Dutch were all over the world. They "owned" and colonized a big portion of what was then the known world. They were among the first settlers, had the biggest haven, and biggest fleet for some time. The Dutch East-Indian Trading Company, or VOC, is probably the biggest or at least one of the biggest companies that has ever existed.

A visit to the Palace of Knossos in Crete in 2005 leads to the story of the fabled Ring of Minos, lost for 2,000 years but rediscovered in the 1930s, now in the local museum of Herakleon. The author joins the tour of the ancient Minoan palace and adds historical reference to this detailed study of a great and vanished culture.

The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age, The Stowaway is “a thrilling adventure that captures not only the making of a man but of a nation” (David Grann, bestselling...

From sailor to legend - the story of Captain James Cook, one of the greatest maritime explorers of all time. Rob Mundle introduces us to an unlikely sailor in a teenage Cook, who through the combination of hard-won skills as a seafarer, the talents of a self-taught navigator and surveyor, and an exceptional ability to lead and care for his men, climbed the ranks of the Royal Navy to achieve legendary status among all who sailed and mapped the world.