Adventure, Exploration & Travel:
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler by Jason Roberts
In this vibrant biography of James Holman, a 19th-century British naval officer who became the greatest traveler of his time. It begins at sea with a strapping 12-year-old boy whose health is falling apart during the Napoleonic Wars. By his late teens, he is bed-ridden; by his 20s, he is blind. Braille has yet to be invented and England's sightless are either pitied or reviled. Against all odds, Holman charted a third course, deciding to circumnavigate the globe.
Holman was an accomplished sailor and joined the Naval Knights of Windsor, a quirky group who only had to live in quarters near Windsor Castle and attend mass for their stipend. For many blind people at the time, this would have been the start of a long (if safe) march to the grave. Holman would have none of it and spent the bulk of his life arranging leaves of absence from the Knights in order to wander the world (without assistance) from Paris to Canton; study medicine at the University of Edinburgh; hunt slavers off the coast of Africa; get arrested by one of the czar's elite bodyguards in Siberia; and publish several bestselling travel memoirs.
Roberts, a contributor to the Village Voice and McSweeney's, does Holman justice, evoking with grace and wit the tale of this man once lionized as "The Blind Traveler." Holman's extraordinary life will bring astonishment and admiration to any reader. From tales of a sea war with Old Ironsides to an account of a trip up a spewing Vesuvius, through crowded cities and across frozen tundra with a metal-tipped cane, James Holman's life as told in this biography reads like a dare to get out of the house and live!
http://www.amazon.com/Sense-World-Historys-Greatest-Traveler/dp/B000WABVF6/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196885929&sr=8-1
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
A year after Teddy Roosevelt suffered a humiliating defeat in his 1912 run for the White House, the audacious adventurer determined to renew his broken spirit with an investigative trip to South America. What began as a relatively mundane float down previously mapped terrain became a much more dangerous journey into the unknown — an expedition down a locally feared tributary of the Amazon known as the “River of Doubt.” The expedition’s labors would forge a new map of the world as well as a previously unplumbed strength of character, necessary for survival.
The River of Doubt is Candice Millard’s account of Roosevelt’s unprecedented feat propels readers straight into the heart of the Amazon — a place filled with hazards of every conceivable description. From vines, poisonous snakes, and piranhas to cannibals and duplicitous guides, Roosevelt was forced to bushwhack a path much more perilous than that of 20th-century politics, and faced unspeakable hardships. Roosevelt and his fellow explorers faced constant illness and disease, fear of attack from hostile tribes, drowning, starvation, and even mutiny within their own ranks. A raging, flesh-eating infection that reached its peak at the most treacherous point in the journey brought Roosevelt himself to the brink of death.
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. Millard, a former writer and editor for National Geographic, succeeds where many have not; she has managed to convey Teddy Roosevelt’s energy and warm interactions, as well as the ex-president’s fervent desire for adventure and self-acceptance.
http://www.amazon.com/River-Doubt-Theodore-Roosevelts-Darkest/dp/0767913736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886028&sr=1-1
Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold by Michael Benanav
Century after century, camels and their drivers have traveled the sands between the fabled city of Timbuktu and the notorious salt mines of Taoudenni, hauling supplies from the proverbial end of the earth to an even farther-flung outpost, deep in Mali's slice of the Sahara. They return laden with tombstone-sized slabs of solid salt. The Caravan of White Gold has traveled the treacherous sands of the Sahara for over 1,000 years: proof that while man can exist without gold, he cannot live without salt.
Spurred by the mistaken impression that trucks will soon supplant camels as vehicles to transport salt to market, Benanav haggled to join a camel caravan traveling to the salt mines during an arduous 1000-mile journey that takes weeks to complete. Following his amused guide, Benanav lived for weeks among the camel drivers, marching eighteen hours a day through sandstorms and searing heat.
Benanav, a wilderness guide and intrepid travel writer and photographer for the New York Times, has long been fascinated by nomadic peoples. His evocative and beautiful writing appeals to all the senses. Readers will be enthralled by the author's introspective telling of the mental and physical challenges of traversing part of the Sahara's punishing terrain. Men of Salt is a revelation, and an important addition to the literature of history and of travel.
http://www.amazon.com/Men-Salt-Crossing-Sahara-Caravan/dp/1592287727/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886092&sr=1-1
Villians of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age by Marcus Rediker
Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates. Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckling figures such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard; and the unnamed, unlimbed pirate who was likely Robert Louis Stevenson"s model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.
This history shows from the bottom up how sailors emerged from deadly working conditions on merchant and naval ships, turned pirate, and created a starkly different reality aboard their own ships, electing their officers, dividing their booty equitably, and maintaining a multinational social order. For Rediker, (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea), a historian of maritime labor, pirates were bold subversives who challenged the prevailing social order and empire building of the five main trading nations.
This unprecedented social and cultural history proves that the real lives of this motley crew are far more compelling than contemporary myth. Pirates challenged and subverted prevailing conventions of race, class, gender, and nationality, posing a radical democratic challenge to the society they left behind. They dared to play the rebellious villains on a floating international stage. The authorities hanged them for it, but the pirates triumphed in the end, winning the battle for the popular imagination in their own day and in ours. Rediker provides a penetrating insight into our enduring cultural fascination with these seafaring outlaws.
http://www.amazon.com/Villains-All-Nations-Atlantic-Pirates/dp/0807050253/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886135&sr=1-1
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz
In an exhilarating tale of historic adventure, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Confederates in the Attic retraces the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who drew the map of the modern world. Captain James Cook's epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. Cook's three voyages of the 1770s were the greatest and most challenging attempts ever undertaken to discover and map the nondum cognita (not yet known) world: the imagined Great Southern Continent, the Pacific archipelagos, and the Northeast Passage. His ships sailed 150,000 miles, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Tasmania to Oregon, from Easter Island to Siberia. When Cook set off for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time of his violent death in Hawaii in 1779, the map of the world was substantially complete.
Tony Horwitz vividly recounts Cook's voyages and the exotic scenes the captain encountered. He also relives Cook's adventures by traveling in the captain's wake to such places as Tahiti, Savage Island, and the Great Barrier Reef; along the way, he discovers Cook's embattled legacy in the present day. Signing on as a working crewman aboard a replica of Cook's vessel, Horwitz experiences the thrill and terror of sailing a tall ship. He also explores Cook the man: an impoverished farm boy who broke through the barriers of his class and time to become the greatest navigator in British history.
By turns harrowing and hilarious, insightful and entertaining, Blue Latitudes brings to life a man whose voyages helped create the global village we know today.
http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Latitudes-Boldly-Captain-Before/dp/B0000AZW7G/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886164&sr=1-1
Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose
Though principally a biography of Meriwether Lewis, this narrative also provides fascinating portraits of Thomas Jefferson, William Clark, Sacagawea and other members of the group of explorers who journeyed from the Ohio River to the Pacific Ocean in the years 1803-1806.
Lewis’ intense curiosity about the world around him, his training as a naturalist, and his ability to record what he saw and experienced provide readers with a fascinating picture of the American frontier in the 19th century. Lewis’ strengths and weaknesses as a leader are revealed as he and his loyal followers meet every kind of challenge in their search for a navigable water route from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
Stephen Ambrose incorporates recent research and new material on the expedition into this history, and includes detailed maps and examples of Lewis' journal entries. While scholarly and well documented, this account is at the same time a great adventure story, and Ambrose generates a sense of excitement and anticipation that mirrors, at least to some degree, the feelings Lewis and Clark must have had as they began their journey.
http://www.amazon.com/Undaunted-Courage-Stephen-E-Ambrose/dp/074347788X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886197&sr=1-1
The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
Setting sail as World War I broke out in Europe, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by renowned polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, hoped to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when their ship, Endurance, was trapped fast in the drifting ice pack. Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floes - a situation that seemed not merely desperate but impossible. Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue.
Caroline Alexander skillfully constructs the expedition's character through its personalities - the cast of veteran explorers, scientists, and crew - with aid from many previously unavailable journals and documents. Such firsthand descriptions, paired with 170 of Frank Hurley's intimate photographs, which are comprehensively assembled for the first time, penetrate the hulls of the Endurance and these tough men. Melding superb research and the extraordinary expedition photography of Hurley, The Endurance is a stunning work of history, adventure, and art that chronicles "one of the greatest epics of survival in the annals of exploration."
Together text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, and the crew's heroic daily struggle to stay alive, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton's inspiring leadership, "a leader who put his men first." Throughout the grueling ordeal, Shackleton and his men show what endurance and greatness are all about. The Endurance is a most intimate portrait of an expedition and of survival. It thrillingly recounts one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exploration - perhaps the greatest of them all.
http://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Legendary-Antarctic-Expedition/dp/0375404031/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196886244&sr=1-6
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
Into Thin Air is a riveting first-hand account of a catastrophic expedition up Mount Everest. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end.
Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest. Taking the reader step by step from Katmandu to the mountain's deadly pinnacle, Krakauer has his readers shaking on the edge of their seat. Beyond the terrors of this account, however, he also peers deeply into the myth of the world's tallest mountain. What is it about Everest that has compelled so many people, including himself, to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense?
Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions. Into Thin Air ranks among the great adventure books of all time. A book of rare eloquence and power that could remain relevant for centuries.
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