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River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon
Buddy Levy · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorUnfamiliar Fishes
Sarah Vowell · 256 pages
From the bestselling author of *The Wordy Shipmates*, comes an examination of Hawaii, the place where Manifest Destiny got a sunburn. Many think of 1776 as the defining year of American history, when we became a nation devoted to the pursuit of happiness through self-government. In *Unfamiliar Fishes*, Sarah Vowell argues that 1898 might be a year just as defining, when, in an orgy of imperial
Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
Tim Jeal · 608 pages
We think of Stanley as a cruel imperialist who connived with King Leopold II of Belgium in horrific crimes against the people of the Congo--and the journalist who conducted the most legendary celebrity interview in history, opening with, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" But these perceptions are not quite true, as biographer Jeal shows. With access to previously closed Stanley family archives, Jeal r
The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
Robert Whitaker · 352 pages
Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
1421: The Year China Discovered America
Gavin Menzies · 649 pages
This volume presents the author's assertion that the fleets of Chinese Admiral Zheng visited the Americas prior to European explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, and that this same Chinese fleet circumnavigated the globe a century before the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan. The author presents a series of vignettes describing his travels around the globe, examining what he claims is evidence for
Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia
Janet Wallach · 419 pages
Reared in the comfortable and privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell turned her back on convention and sought adventure in Arab lands. Traveling numerous times through the Syrian Desert and, at risk to her life, through the great Arabian desert of the Nejd - the last European to do so before the eruption of World War I - she wrote of her travels in widely acclaimed books. T
The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream
Christina Lamb · 384 pages
Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
Tim Butcher · 363 pages
The author recounts his audacious and perilous quest through the Congo as he retraced the 1874 expedition of explorer H. M. Stanley to map the Congo River, traveling alone with an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and dugout canoe, and aided by characters ranging from U.N. aid workers to a pygmy-rights advocate.
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Laurence Bergreen · 480 pages
Publisher's description: Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century was a three-year odyssey filled with sex, violence, and amazing adventure. Now in Over the Edge of the World, acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, interweaving a variety of candid, first-person accounts, some previously unavailable in English, brings to life this groundbreaking and majestic t
In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
Michela Wrong · 353 pages
Known as "the Leopard," the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne in his jungle palace l
Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet
Peter Hopkirk · 280 pages
Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire
Simon Winchester · 362 pages
Another Day of Life
Ryszard Kapuscinski · 136 pages
The Boer War
Thomas Pakenham · 659 pages
Comprehensive history of the Boer War, a war precipitated by greed and marked by blundering and brutalities.
Silencing the Past
Michel-Rolph Trouillot · 191 pages
In this provocative analysis of historical narrative, Michel-Rolph Trouillot demonstrates how power operates, often invisibly, at all stages in the making of history to silence certain voices. From the West's failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave revolt in history, to the continued debate over denials of the Holocaust, and the meaning of Columbus's arrival in th
The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Discovery
Martin Dugard · 294 pages
The Year is 1500. Christopher Columbus, stripped of his title Admiral of the Ocean Seas, waits in chains in a Caribbean prison built under his orders, looking out at the colony that he founded, nurtured, and ruled for eight years. Less than a decade after discovering the New World, he has fallen into disgrace, accused by the royal court of being a liar, a secret Jew, and a foreigner who sought to
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty
John M. Barry · 472 pages
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
Tony Horwitz · 464 pages
The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower America On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he’s mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown’s founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, foll
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War
James D. Bradley · 387 pages
In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.In 2005, a centu
King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father
Brooke Barbier · 320 pages
Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire
Julian Sancton · 384 pages
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
Colin Woodard · 371 pages
The author describes eleven rival regional "nations" in the United States (Yankeedom, New Netherland, the Midlands, Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, the Deep South, New France, El Norte, the Left Coast, the Far West, and First Nation), and how these deep roots continue to influence our politics today.