Expeditions & Discoveries Books - Page 3

Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842

Nathaniel Philbrick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Government Science! Read Carefully, Congress! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

A little crankish determination, a little sordid bickering, a heroic cruise on a sailing ship to the ends of the Earth, betrayal and exoneration - all elements of a great adventure book, written with verve and yet with careful scholarship. I'm amazed that so many other reviewers have given this eminently readable book only four stars. The publisher's marketing director made some terrible mistakes.

The saga of Captain Wilkes - his triumphs, his shortcomings, his political court-martial - form the narrative backbone of this book, but there's more to it. There's a lot of fascinating history of the paradigmatic changes in science and technology that occurred during the first half of the 19th Century, the era that Paul Johnson describes as The Birth of the Modern. There's also an insightful depiction of American politics in that period, focusing for a change not on the issues that led to the Civil War but on the still-urgent question of the role of the federal government in funding infrastructure and development, in this case of scientific knowledge.

The US Exploring Expedition was the federal government's largest investment of public money in scientific research before the space program, in adjusted dollars more expensive than the geological surveys after the Civil War - those of Clarence King and John Wesley Powell, which committed those fellows in Washington to subsidizing the "opening of the West" - and it was, though plagued with problems and disappointing to some of its advocates, a monumental success, an enormous contribution to the world's knowledge of itself. Without federal funding, it would never have occurred. That's the subtext to all the glory of exploration, isn't it? Without Isabela, no Columbus! The closest comparison to the US Exploring Expedition is the US Space Program, so fearfully politicized and handicapped by Republican administrations and congresses. Foresightful and generous support of the sciences is one of the justifying functions of government - democratic, oligarchic, monarchical - and since science, even as early as 1838, has become big and expensive, government can be of greatest value to humanity on a proportionate scale. The difficulty that its promoters had in getting the EE funded tells much about the inadequacy of capitalism, also; the "business" interests who insisted on immediate profitable returns from the scientific expedition came close to destroying the whole project.

Editorial Review:

America’s first frontier was not the West; it was the sea—and no one writes more eloquently about that watery wilderness than Nathaniel Philbrick. In his bestselling In the Heart of the Sea Philbrick probed the nightmarish dangers of the vast Pacific. Now, in an epic sea adventure, he writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen—the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838– 1842. On a scale that dwarfed the journey of Lewis and Clark, six magnificent sailing vessels and a crew of hundreds set out to map the entire Pacific Ocean—and ended up naming the newly discovered continent of Antarctica, collecting what would become the basis of the Smithsonian Institution, and much more.

The Worst Journey in the World (Penguin Classics)

Apsley Cherry-Garrard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

WHAT YOU HOPE YOUR HUSBAND COULD DO 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Get this book and read it to your children. Teach them of the days when men were men (and British at that!). Wean them from the cultural myth that whining and wimping and looking out for yourself alone are desirable traits. This book is about more than survival; it is about life and living. Here men give their all for the mission, for each other, for the animals in their service. You read it and wonder, could I have lived it? The book will answer, reminding you that there is more to life and more to live for, than we ever realized.

Editorial Review:

The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard—the youngest member of Scott’s team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey—draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of his compatriots to create a stirring and detailed account of Scott’s legendary expedition. Cherry himself would be among the search party that discovered the corpses of Scott and his men, who had long since perished from starvation and brutal cold. It is through Cherry’s insightful narrative and keen descriptions that Scott and the other members of the expedition are fully memorialized.

The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

Nancy Marie Brown

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, no one believed that the details of Gudrid’s story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scientists discovered what may have been this pioneering woman’s last house, buried under a hay field in Iceland, just where the sagas suggested it could be.

 

Joining scientists experimenting with cutting-edge technology and the latest archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid’s steps on land and in the sagas, Nancy Marie Brown reconstructs a life that spanned—and expanded—the bounds of the then-known world. She also sheds new light on the society that gave rise to a woman even more extraordinary than legend has painted her and illuminates the reasons for its collapse.

 

Farthest North: The Epic Adventure of a Visionary Explorer

Fridtjof Nansen

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Editorial Review:

"If Outside magazine had been around during the first turn of the century, Fridtjof Nansen would have been its No. 1 cover boy."—The Chicago Sun-Times

In September of 1893, Norwegian zoologist Fridtjof Nansen and crew manned the schooner Fram, intending to drift, frozen in the Arctic pack-ice, to the North Pole. When it became clear that they would miss the pole, Nansen and companion Hjalmar Johansen struck off by themselves. Racing the shrinking pack-ice, they attempted, by dog-sled, to go "farthest north." They survived a winter in a moss hut eating walruses and polar bears, and the public assumed they were dead. In the spring of 1896, after three years of trekking, and having made it to within four degrees of the pole, they returned to safety. Nansen's narrative stands with the best writing on polar exploration. 20 b/w photographs.

Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt

Nina Burleigh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Two hundred years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared to traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. But in 1798, more than 150 French engineers, artists, doctors, and scientists—even a poet and a musicologist—traveled to the Nile Valley under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte and his invading army. Hazarding hunger, hardship, uncertainty, and disease, Napoleon's "savants" risked their lives in pursuit of discovery. The first large-scale interaction between Europeans and Muslims in the modern era, the audacious expedition was both a triumph and a disaster, resulting in finds of immense historical and scientific importance (including the ruins of the colossal pyramids and the Rosetta Stone) and in countless tragic deaths through plague, privation, madness, or violence.

Acclaimed journalist Nina Burleigh brings readers back to the landmark adventure at the dawn of the modern era that ultimately revealed the deepest secrets of ancient Egypt to a curious continent.

Journey to the East

Hermann Hesse

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Misleading mystical mystery tour with some occasional insights 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

When one thinks of a 'Journey to the East' one thinks of a trip to India or China. This is not however what this book is about.
The only real place in this book is the mind of the writer. The narrator tells of his membership in a strange kind of society called the League, and his strange journey in Time and Space. He does not in fact go to any real place which is concretely and specifically described. And the people he travels with are mostly distinguished historical figures, philosophers, mystics, writers - just names mentioned perhaps to impress. The only figure of substance is named Leo, who in the beginning is the faithful servant, the most virtous of all the members of the League. When he disappears the narrator searches for him and finds him walking, engages him in a conversation in which we come to understand that Leo is the great wise figure but cannot really help the poor narrator.
This trip is a mind - trip and it has something to do with escaping with the horrors of history and civilization. Or at least that's the way I interpret. Hesse was a strong pacifist, influened by his parents in their pietistic Christian home. He also was influenced by the great historican Jacob Burckhardt who perhaps is the figure Leo in the book is modeled after.
I am actually a bit confused about whether to recommend this book or not. It certainly is 'different'. And Hesse throws in ideas now and then which are interesting.
The idea of an unreal journey or a journey purely in the mind was of course highly suited to those of the psychedelic hippy generation.
And we all want to escape sometimes.
However there is no character here, even Leo, who moves the way a great character in Literature does.
There is no situation, no connection , no human relationship which moves in such a way either.
This is a very lonely book written out of a very lonely and weird mind.
It can be interesting but I was grateful that it was not longer.

Editorial Review:

In simple, mesmerizing prose, Hermann Hesse tells of a journey both geographic and spiritual. H.H., a German choirmaster, is invited on an expedition with the League, a secret society whose members include Paul Klee, Mozart, and Albertus Magnus. The participants traverse both space and time, encountering Noah’s Ark in Zurich and Don Quixote at Bremgarten. The pilgrims’ ultimate destination is the East, the “Home of the Light,” where they expect to find spiritual renewal. Yet the harmony that ruled at the outset of the trip soon degenerates into open conflict. Each traveler finds the rest of the group intolerable and heads off in his own direction, with H.H. bitterly blaming the others for the failure of the journey. It is only long after the trip, while poring over records in the League archives, that H.H. discovers his own role in the dissolution of the group, and the ominous significance of the journey itself.

Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A brilliant and readable book...a rich study of humankind's restless spirit."—Candice Millard, New York Times Book Review

Greeted with coast-to-coast acclaim on publication, Fernández-Armesto's ambitious history of world exploration sets a new standard. Presenting the subject for the first time on a truly global scale, Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the past five millennia, lay down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world.

The Wall Street Journal calls it "impressive...a huge story [told] with gusto and panache." To the Washington Post, "Pathfinders is propelled by an Argonaut of an author, indefatigable and daring. It's a wild ride." And in a front-page review, the Seattle Times hails its "tart and elegant presentation...full of surprises. Fernández-Armesto's lively mind, pithy phrasing, and stunningly thorough and diverse knowledge are a constant pleasure."

A plenitude of illustrations and maps in color and black and white augment this rich history. In Pathfinders we have a definitive treatment of a grand subject. 16 pages of color; 44 illustrations; 48 maps.

The Last Place on Earth (Modern Library Exploration)

Roland Huntford

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Total reviews: 77 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable history that captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed men who were charged with carrying them out. THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is the first of Huntford's masterly trilogy of polar biographies. It is also the only work on the subject in the English language based on the original Norwegian sources, to which Huntford returned to revise and update this edition.

In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic

Valerian Albanov

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea-a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provisions that left the crew weak and debilitated by scurvy.

For nearly a year and a half, the twenty-five men and one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships and danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov and thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges and kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef Land. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears and walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, and mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal-a story that Jon Krakauer calls an "astounding, utterly compelling book," and David Roberts calls "as lean and taut as a good thriller"-is nearly miraculous.

First published in Russia in 1917, Albanov's narrative is here translated into English for the first time. Haunting, suspenseful, and told with gripping detail, In the Land of White Death can now rightfully take its place among the classic writings of Nansen, Scott, Cherry-Garrard, and Shackleton.

Apollo 13

Jeffrey Kluger, James Lovell

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Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The best-selling book that inspired the blockbuster movie

"A story of courage — in space, at NASA, and at the homes of those involved." — Houston Chronicle

A timeless tribute to the enduring American spirit, Apollo 13 tells the story of America's fifth mission to the moon, a mission that nearly ended in catastrophe in April 1970. Only fifty-five hours into the flight, disaster struck for Jim Lovell and two other astronauts after an explosion left them with a rapidly declining supply of oxygen and power. Lovell and Kluger vividly chronicle how the men were forced to abandon the main ship for the lunar module, a tiny craft designed to keep two men alive for only two days. At home, a nation watched the desperate efforts of Mission Control to bring the crew back in what many consider NASA's finest hour.

"A thrilling story of a thrilling episode in the history of space exploration." — James A. Michener, author of Space

"Puts the reader in one of those [Apollo] slingshots, pulls, and lets go. What a moon shot. What a time. What a ride." — Baltimore Sun

"A tale of adventure to chill a reader's spine." — Atlantic Monthly

Jim Lovell joined NASA in 1962 and flew a total of four missions before retiring in 1973. He continues to lecture across the country, speaking about space exploration.

Jeffrey Kluger is a senior writer at Time and the author of several other books, including Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine.