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Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire
Simon Winchester · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorBlood 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.
Unfamiliar 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
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
Lawrence Durrell · 287 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
Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge
John Gimlette · 358 pages
Intrigued by the tale of a distant ancestor who perished on the Wild Coast in 1630, John Gimlette returns to South America to find out what has become of this primeval land. It is a journey that takes him through the old colonies of British, Dutch and French Guiana, through some of the most fantastic forests in the world and through four hundred years of shameless, and often horrifying, colonial h
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
Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
Travels into the Interior of Africa
Mungo Park · 386 pages
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
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
River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon
Buddy Levy · 324 pages
From the acclaimed author of "Conquistador" comes this thrilling account of one of history's greatest adventures of discovery--the true story of a legendary sixteenth-century explorer and his death-defying navigation of the Amazon.
Travels in West Africa
Mary Henrietta Kingsley · 541 pages
Another Day of Life
Ryszard Kapuscinski · 136 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
Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet
Peter Hopkirk · 280 pages
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
The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
Robert Whitaker · 352 pages
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
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
Civilization: The West and the Rest
Niall Ferguson · 402 pages
What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six "killer applications"?that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six thing