The Great Explorer

When a famous explorer goes missing in the North Pole, his son, Tom, decides he must find him. And so a daring adventure begins across the treacherous icy terrain of the North Pole. Will Tom be able overcome the many challenges ahead and find his father?

Penetrating biographies written by a group of distinguished travel writers, broadcasters, and historians reveal the lives, motives, and passions of forty major explorers in history. It has always been mankind’s gift, or curse, to be inquisitive, and through the ages people have been driven to explore the limits of the worlds known to them—and beyond. Here are the stories of forty of the world’s greatest explorers from Europe, America, Asia, and Australia. These are men and women who changed our perception of the world through their courageous adventures. Organized thematically, the book opens with the oceanic journeys of five hundred years ago, when the great era of recorded exploration began. The following sections look at The Land, Rivers, Polar Ice, Deserts, Life on Earth, and New Frontiers. Many of these explorers recounted their journeys in vivid firsthand accounts; others were superb artists or photographers. The book features quotes from their journals and reports, and it is illustrated with paintings, photographs, engravings, and maps, so that we can experience their adventures through their own eyes and in their own words. Featured explorers include: Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, James Cook, Lewis and Clark, Richard Burton, Samuel de Champlain, David Livingstone, Roald Amundsen, Gertrude Bell, Alexander von Humboldt, Yuri Gagarin, and Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great gentlemen explorer-adventurers, became a legend in his own lifetime. This authorised biography by a longstanding friend and associate delves into his little-known character and motivations, as well as recounting the details of his extraordinary life.

"Examines the life of Captain James Cook, a British explorer and scientist, including his early life, his many Pacific voyages, and his death and legacy"--Provided by publisher.

Henry Morton Stanley was a cruel imperialist - a bad man of Africa. Or so we think: but as Tim Jeal brilliantly shows, the reality of Stanley's life is yet more extraordinary. Few people know of his dazzling trans-Africa journey, a heart-breaking epic of human endurance which solved virtually every one of the continent's remaining geographical puzzles. With new documentary evidence, Jeal explores the very nature of exploration and reappraises a reputation, in a way that is both moving and truly majestic.

Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan are all familiar names from the Age of Exploration (1400–1550). Columbus is known for discovering America; Vasco da Gama is the first European to sail to India; and Magellan is believed to have completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. Such common-sense knowledge has met a serious challenge with new findings related to the great Chinese navigator and explorer Cheng Ho (1371–1435). Over a span of 28 years from 1405 to 1433, he directed seven large-scale voyages to the western Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and left his mark in over 30 countries in Southeast Asia, West Asia and East Africa. Historians have even suggested that Cheng Ho and his massive fleet could have made their way to America and Australia. How much do you know about Cheng Ho and the voyages he commanded? When and how did these voyages take place? What influences have these historic voyages exerted on the places Cheng Ho had set his feet on? In what aspects is Cheng Ho different from the European explorers? Check out the Ambassador of Peace in this book!

There are few thrills as exciting as weather at its worst. We often hear on the news that the day was the hottest, coldest, wettest, or snowiest on record. Is the climate really becoming more extreme as a result of global warming? The facts are in this book. Extensively illustrated with colour photographs of some of the most extreme weather ever captured on camera, more than fifty colour maps, and tables of weather records for over three hundred U.S. cities, this book is both an entertainment and an indispensable reference. Also included are historical examples of some of the more bizarre weather events observed: heat bursts, electrified dust storms, snow rollers, pink snowstorms, luminous tornadoes, falls of fish and toads, ball lightning, super bolts, and other strange meteorological events. Here's the must-have book for Weather Channel and Guinness Book of World Records fans.

This is the story of the greatest Canadian ice captain who ever lived--the greatest, by general consent, of any nationality in this century. Robert Bartlett took ships to the north coast of Ellesmere Island, sledged to within 150 miles of the North Pole, made twenty-two voyages into the Canadian Arctic, and six to other parts of the Arctic, yet is almost wholly unknown in Canada. Besides piloting some of the most famous exploring voyages of all time--those of Robert E. Peary and Vilhajalmur Stefansson--Bartlett made four arctic voyages for the American Government and sixteen expeditions of his own which produced, in the period between the world wars, an immense wealth of scientific knowledge. He was the first arctic explorer to place science ahead of exploration. Harold Harwood worked from the original manuscripts and ships' logs to tell the life-story of this remarkable man. Bartlett was a colourful, often controversial character, a man whose extraordinary courage and tenacity were of heroic proportions.