Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World

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 Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

Tim Butcher · 326 pages

"On a summer morning in Sarajevo almost a hundred years ago, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo Princip, started a cycle of events that would leave 15 million dead from fighting between 1914 and 1918 and

Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest

Wade Davis · 672 pages

If the quest for Mount Everest began as a grand imperial gesture, as redemption for an empire of explorers that had lost the race to the Poles, it ended as a mission of regeneration for a country and a people bled white by war.

Scott and Amundsen

Roland Huntford · 565 pages

Examines the differences in the two men's approaches to the discovery of the South Pole. A eulogy of Roald Amundsen and a debunking of R.F. scott. Well researched, but unduly biased.

Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure That Took the Victorian World by Storm

Monte Reel · 360 pages

Documents the story of mid-19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu, who after three years in the equatorial wilderness of West Africa emerged with definitive proof of the existence of the mythical gorilla, only to be swept up by the heated debate about Darwin's theory of evolution.

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

Tony Horwitz · 496 pages

"James Cook's three epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. When he embarked for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in 1779, during a bloody clash in Hawaii, the map of the world was substantially complete. Cook explored more of the earth's surface than anyone in history - sailing from the Arctic to the Antarct

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century

Ross E. Dunn, Ibn Battuta · 357 pages

Known as the greatest traveler of premodern times, Abu Abdallah ibn Battuta was born in Morocco in 1304 and educated in Islamic law. At the age of twenty-one, he left home to make the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. This was only the first of a series of extraordinary journeys that spanned nearly three decades and took him not only eastward to India and China but also north to the Volga River valley and

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

T.J. Stiles · 719 pages

A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism.Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington's presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation's largest fleet o

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom

Simon Winchester · 316 pages

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically adva

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

Martin Dugard · 340 pages

Describes the disappearance of explorer Dr. David Livingstone while searching for the source of the Nile River, journalist Henry Morton Stanley's search for him, and the individual journeys of the two men through uncharted Africa.

A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler

Jason Roberts · 400 pages

He was known simply as the Blind Traveler. A solitary, sightless adventurer, James Holman (1786-1857) fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon, helped chart the Australian outback — and, astonishingly, circumnavigated the globe, becoming one of the greatest wonders of the world he so sagaciously explored. A Sense of the World is a s

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

David Grann · 339 pages

A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker wr

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

Candice Millard · 440 pages

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.The River of Doubt--it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its

Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

Laurence Bergreen · 415 pages

In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia

Michael Wood · 256 pages

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

Sarah Vowell · 288 pages

On August 16, 1824, an elderly French gentlemen sailed into New York Harbor and giddy Americans were there to welcome him. Or, rather, to welcome him back. It had been 30 years since the Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette had last set foot in the United States, and he was so beloved that 80,000 people showed up to cheer for him. The entire population of New York at the time was 120,00

The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream

Christina Lamb · 384 pages

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton

Edward Rice · 522 pages

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

Who Was Marco Polo?

Joan Holub · 105 pages

Una biografía del famoso viajero veneciano medieval, Marco Polo. A biography of the famous medieval Venetian traveler, Marco Polo.

Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

Ben Montgomery · 282 pages

"Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangst

South with Endurance: Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition 1914-1917

Frank Hurley · 320 pages

Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West

Stephen Fried

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue

Kathryn J. Atwood · 266 pages