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Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
Peter Stark · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond · 592 pages
"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Nathaniel Philbrick · 320 pages
In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage to hunt whales. Fifteen months later, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale.
The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
Anthony Brandt · 464 pages
The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of nineteenth-century British exploration.After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the sixteenth century: find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea
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
A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca
Andres Resendez · 314 pages
Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
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
Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier
Stephen E. Ambrose · 521 pages
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact wit
Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
Eric Jay Dolin · 442 pages
In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America
The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
Caroline Alexander · 224 pages
In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their de
In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
Hampton Sides · 480 pages
A dramatic account of the ill-fated 19th-century naval expedition to the North Pole cites the contributions of German cartographer August Peterman, New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett and famed naval officer George Washington De Long in the team's efforts to survive brutal environmental conditions.
The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny
Michael Wallis · 496 pages
An account of the 1846 Donner-Reed expedition reveals the true events surrounding the tragedy, profiling the adventurous characters who shaped the group and how various interpersonal factors led to their harrowing experiences. "In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most
Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and The Endurance
Jennifer Armstrong · 139 pages
A very comprehensive account of one of the most important scientific and cultural expeditions in the western world--the third exploration of Antarctica, in 1914. This text captures the emotions, strengths and weaknesses of the 28-man crew as individuals, their trials and conflicts, and gives an excellent account of the difficulties that through collective will they conquered. The conditions they f
Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire
Julian Sancton · 384 pages
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Alfred Lansing · 282 pages
Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned to cross on foot the last uncharted continent, the Endurance set sail from England, in August 1914. The ship became locked inside an island of ice, and was later crushed. This tale of survival by Shackleton and all 27 of his men for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctice seas defined heroism.
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Daniel Immerwahr · 513 pages
Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
William Cronon · 249 pages
In this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land, provides a brilliant inter-dis
1776
David McCullough · 393 pages
In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based
A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn · 702 pages
Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, *A People's History of the United States* is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers.
The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865
Mark Peterson · 784 pages
The Mexican Heartland: How Communities Shaped Capitalism, a Nation, and World History, 1500–2000
John Tutino · 512 pages
The Ice Master
Jennifer Niven · 402 pages
It was to be the greatest and most elaborate Arctic expedition in history, with the largest scientific staff ever taken on such a journey. It's leader, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, was celebrated for his studies of Eskimo life and, with this mission, hoped to find evidence that proved his staunchly held belief that there was a last unexplored continent, hidden beneath the vast polar ice cap. In June 191