Showing titles in Adventurers, Explorers & Survival

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan, Columbus, and Marco Polo brings alive the singular life and adventures of Sir Francis Drake, the pirate/explorer/admiral whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed the course of history...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the definitive book on Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the most momentous expedition in American history and one of the great adventure stories of all time. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson...

From the #1 bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat and Facing the Mountain comes an unforgettable epic of family, tragedy, and survival on the American frontier “An ideal pairing of talent and material.… Engrossing.… A deft and ambitious storyteller.” — Mary Roach, New York Times...

I Should Have Left the Whiskey is the first book in the Rambling On trilogy–compelling tales from a time when motorcycles were left in the shed and global exploration slowed to the pace of cycling. These diaries divulge two very different journeys in Asia: because progressing into enlightened India required some back-pedalling through darkest Thailand en route to China.

Canoeing the Congo narrates the journey of Phil Harwood, who undertook an epic five-month solo attempt to canoe the Congo River in war-torn Central Africa. It was a historic 'first descent' from the true source in the highlands of Zambia. Just short of 3,000 miles long, the Congo River is the eighth longest in the world and the deepest river in the world, with a flow rate second only to the Amazon. Along the way, Phil encountered numerous waterfalls, huge rapids, man-eating crocodiles, hippos, aggressive snakes...

The harrowing story of a woman who escaped famine and terror in North Korea, not once but twice. ‘A gripping, suspenseful and cathartic memoir that tells a story of pain and perseverance and makes the moral case for asylum.’ David Lammy MP North Korea is an open-air prison from which there...

An exemplary travelogue of danger and achievement by the Frenchwoman Madame Alexandra David-Neel of her 1923 expedition to Tibet, the fifth in her series of Asian travels and her personal recounting of her journey to Lhasa, Tibet's forbidden city. In order to penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, she used her fluency of Tibetan dialects and culture, disguised herself as a beggar with yak hair extensions and inked skin, and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the world.

Seth Gehle's story is a testament to the courage and strength within each of us to overcome adversity and our personal traumas. For nearly sixteen years, Seth suffered unspeakable crimes and endured tragedy that no human should have to face. Growing up in a broken home filled with abuse and neglect, a young Seth left and found himself further down the path to hell.

In 1528, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane, knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, and ultimately doomed by a disastrous decision to separate the men from their ships, the mission quickly became a desperate journey of survival. Of the 300 men who had embarked on the journey, only four survived - three Spaniards and an African slave.

‘Enthusiastic, pleasingly madcap’ Geographical Adventure – something that’s new and exhilarating, outside your comfort zone. Adventures change you and how you see the world, and all you need is an open mind, bags of enthusiasm and boundless curiosity. So what’s a microadventure? It’s...

Over the course of twenty years of delivering sailboats to far-flung quaysides, John Kretschmer has had innumerable adventures, both humorous and terrifying. In Flirting with Mermaids, he recounts the most memorable of them. He crosses the Western Caribbean with a crew of eccentric Swedes researching ancient Mayan mariners, lands in Aden at the outbreak of civil war, and endures a North Atlantic crossing during which he discovers the existence of Force 13 winds.

In 1892, Gertrude Bell visited Persia (now Iran) shortly after the appointment of her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, as British minister in Tehran. Three years later came Persian Pictures, Gertrude Bell’s first written work, which presents a series of vivid sketches of Persian culture and society at the time. Bell explores various cities and landscapes, and encounters local characters along the way, providing a unique perspective on Persian life and customs.

In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most complex, perplexing, and paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West, drawing on more than 20 years of research - including new primary sources - in his quest to separate the life from the legend. Doc Holliday was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies

As Dog Man opens, Martha Sherrill brings us to a world that Americans know very little about---the snow country of Japan during World War II. In a mountain village, we meet Morie Sawataishi, a fierce individualist who has chosen to break the law by keeping an Akita dog hidden in a shed on his property.

This is a brilliant dual biography charting British Robert Scott's and Norwegian Roald Amundsen's race to the South Pole during 1911-12. Huntuford's is the accepted, definitive account of the race and a reassessment of the two men. Thoroughly researched, revealing the adventures and misfortunes that befell them both, he describes the driving ambitions of the era, and the complex, often deeply flawed individuals who were charged with carrying them out.

In 1935 a young Englishman named Laurie Lee arrived in Spain. He had never been overseas. His idea was to walk through the country, earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas. Nearly a century later, the book Laurie Lee wrote - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - inspired Alastair Humphreys. It made him fall in love with Spain - the landscapes and the spirit - and with Laurie's style of travel. Alastair dreamed of retracing Laurie Lee’s footsteps but could never get past the hurdle of being distinctly unmusical. This year, he decided to go anyway.

On the precipice of starting her adult life, aged eighteen, Sophie, a rebellious and incorrigible wild child, crashed her car and was instantly paralysed from the chest down. Rushed to hospital, everything she had dreamed for her life was instantly forgotten and her journey to rediscover herself and build a different life began. But being told she would never walk again would come to be the least of her concerns.

From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a poignant memoir about her spiritual epiphany and an appeal for why everyone can find a reason for hope. Dr. Jane Goodall's revolutionary study of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe preserve...

With his characteristic color and flair, Capstick recalls the extraordinary careers of men like Colonel J.H. Patterson and Colonel Jim Corbett, who stalked legendary man-eaters through the silent darkness on opposite sides of the world; men like Karamojo Bell, acknowledged as the greatest elephant hunter of all time; men like the valiant Sasha Siemel, who tracked killer jaguars though the Matto Grosso armed only with a spear.