Showing titles in Adventurers, Explorers & Survival

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

Frenchman Lionel Terray is one of mountaineering history's greatest alpinists, and his autobiography, Conquistadors of the Useless, stands among the "100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time", according to National Geographic Adventure magazine. Following World War II, when France desperately needed successes to heal its wounds, Terray emerged as a national hero, conquering summits atop the planet's highest mountains.

The real stories behind the scenery of America’s national parks. For 12 years, Andrea Lankford lived in the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes. Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it.

Trapped in a job he hated and up to his neck in debt, Guy Grieve’s life was going nowhere. But with a stroke of luck, his dream of escaping it all to live in remote Alaska suddenly came true. Miles from the nearest human being and armed with only the most basic equipment, Guy built a log cabin from scratch and began carving a life for himself through fishing, hunting, and diligently avoiding bears. Packed with adventure, humor, and insight, this is the gripping story of an ordinary man learning the ways of the wild.

Shortly after his death in 1957, The New York Times obituary of Peter Freuchen noted that except for Richard E. Byrd, and despite his foreign beginnings, Freuchen was perhaps better known to more people in the United States than any other explorer of our time. During his lifetime Freuchen's remarkable adventures, related in his books, magazine articles, and films, made him a legend. In 1910, Freuchen and his friend and business partner, Knud Rasmussen, the renowned polar explorer, founded Thule—a Greenland Inuit trading post and village only 800 miles from the North Pole.

In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five children pulled up stakes in the lower 48 and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available lay north of Fairbanks near the Arctic Circle where grizzlies outnumbered humans 20 to one. In addition to fierce winters and predatory animals, the Alaskan frontier drew the more unsavory elements of society's fringes. From the beginning, the Cobbs found themselves pitted in a life or death feud with unscrupulous neighbors who would rob from new settlers.

The most accomplished mountain runner of all time contemplates his record-breaking climbs of Mount Everest in this profound memoir - an intellectual and spiritual journey that moves from the earth’s highest peak to the soul’s deepest reaches.

For years, Emma Carey was a regular young adult who would wake up and go about their day on autopilot, someone who would look at a sunset and feel unaffected, someone who was living, but not really alive. That is, until something happened that enabled her to really see life for the gift it is. Emma was in a skydiving accident that made her a paraplegic. This book is not just about Emma's fall from the sky and how she learned to walk without ever regaining feeling in her legs but also about the beliefs and ideas that helped her survive.

In 1804, John Colter set out with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first US expedition to traverse the North American continent. During the 28-month ordeal, Colter served as a hunter and scout, and honed his survival skills on the western frontier. But when the journey was over, Colter stayed behind. He spent two more years trekking alone through dangerous and unfamiliar territory, charting some of the West's most treasured landmarks.

Beryl Markham, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, describes her childhood on a farm in Kenya, her apprenticeship as a horse trainer, and her later career as a pioneer aviator who piloted passengers and supplies in a small plane to remote corners of Africa.

Amy's happy life changed forever when her mother suddenly passed. Abandoned by her family as they struggled to cope, she found herself facing hardships and exploitation alone, which eventually led to severe drug addiction at twelve years old. Now she shares what it was like to survive her new life in UK #1 bestselling author Toni Maguire's latest survivor story, Abandoned Child. This book, full of dark secrets and hard choices, follows Amy's journey from a victim to a fighter. The lesson? Change isn't easy, but it is worth it.

Twenty years since its first publication, this new anniversary edition of the Holocaust memoir of George Salton (then Lucjan Salzman), gives listeners a personal and powerful account of his survival through one of the darkest periods in human history. With heartbreaking and honest reflection, the author shares a gripping first-person narrative of his transformation from a Jewish eleven-year-old boy living happily in Tyczyn, Poland, with his brother and parents, to his experiences as a teenage victim of growing persecution, brutality, and imprisonment as the Nazis pursued the Final Solution.

The Curse of Oak Island is a fascinating account of the strange, rich history of the island and the intrepid treasure hunters who have driven themselves to financial ruin, psychotic breakdowns, and even death in pursuit of answers. And as Michigan brothers Marty and Rick Lagina become the latest to attempt to solve the mystery, as documented on the History Channel’s television show The Curse of Oak Island, Sullivan takes listeners along to follow their quest firsthand.

In the tradition of Into Thin Air and Touching the Void, No Way Down by New York Times reporter Graham Bowley is the harrowing account of the worst mountain climbing disaster on K2, second to Everest in height . . . but second to no peak in terms of danger. From tragic deaths to unbelievable stories of heroism and survival, No Way Down is an amazing feat of storytelling and adventure writing, and, in the words of explorer and author Sir Ranulph Fiennes, "the closest you can come to being on the summit of K2 on that fateful day."

Adventure, politics, suspense, drama, diplomacy, romance, and personal tragedy combine to make this outstanding work of scholarship about Captain Meriwether Lewis, hand-picked by President Thomas Jefferson to explore and acquire the American West. Browse more Ambrose, including his latest, Nothing Like It in the World.

On average, around 350,000 U.S. students, and nearly one million students worldwide, study abroad every year. Yet since its inception in 1963, only about 73,000 total students from over 1500 colleges and universities have participated in Semester at Sea. It is a truly unique, exclusive, and intimate experience, where students and faculty study, work, and travel to the farthest reaches of the globe.

When Geraldine "Gerry" Largay first went missing on the Appalachian Trail in remote western Maine in 2013, the people of Maine were wrought with concern. When she was not found, the family, the wardens, and the Navy personnel who searched for her were devastated. The Maine Warden Service continued to follow leads for more than a year. They never completely gave up the search. Two years after her disappearance, her bones and scattered possessions were found by chance by two surveyors.

The Trail is a moving story of how nature helps us find what’s missing in our lives. The tale begins with Gil, who in the wake of his father’s death and recently fired from his job, agrees to accompany his father’s old hiking partner Syd on a month-long trek on the John Muir Trail. There’s just one problem: Gil hates camping and is woefully unprepared for the rigors of the journey. Moreover, he soon learns Syd may not survive the hike.

Sheila Kogan was not your typical pilgrim! This sixty-something, Jewish-Catholic, grandmother and dance teacher takes us on an unforgettable trek across Spain. With her, we flirt with Richard outside the Cathedral in Leon, reunite a sandal with a dancing Spaniard, weep with Meg over the loss of her daughter, and get a sensuous massage from a tyrannical angel. Close-to-the-bone, funny as well as heart-rending, the stories in Found Along The Way invite us to experience the Camino de Santiago as well as to journey inward, where fear and doubt battle trust and faith.

How has Florida's land changed across five centuries? What has stayed the same, and what remains only in memory? In Tracing Florida Journeys, Leslie Poole delves into the stories of well-known explorers and travelers who came to the peninsula and wrote about their experiences, looking at their words and the paths they took from the perspective of today.