History - Expeditions & Discoveries

In 1914, an expedition headed by Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to be the first to cross the continent of Antarctica. Shipwrecked and marooned for months on end, their ill-fated voyage became a triumphant story of indomitable courage and faith in the face of...

"Beyond terrific. I didn't want it to end." --Bill Bryson Driven by a passion for travel and history and a love of ships and the sea, former Monty Python stalwart and beloved television globe-trotter Michael Palin explores the world of HMS Erebus, last seen...

In July 1776, Franciscan friars Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante set out from Santa Fe to blaze a pathway to the new Spanish missions in California, across the huge expanse of what would become the American Southwest. In October, in western...

A fascinating and entertaining look at the men behind the first surgical use of anesthesia--and the price they paid for their breakthrough.On Friday, October 16, 1846, only one operation was scheduled at Massachusetts General Hospital....That day in Boston, the operation was the routine removal...

Featuring original interviews with Everest mountain guides and climbers, this is "a fast-moving, nuanced account of the peak's transformation from the ultimate mountaineering challenge into a booming business opportunity" (Joshua Hammer, New York Times bestselling author). Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin...

Discover the epic history of human exploration and migration, and the stories of fearless pioneers the world over, with this stunning tour of history - map by map. Charting everything from the movement of early Homo species out of Africa some 1.8 million years...

Unfurling a tapestry of surprising and historically overlooked figures spanning forty centuries and six continents, historian Matthew Lockwood narrates lives filled with imagination and wonder, curiosity, connection, and exchange. Familiar icons of exploration like Pocahontas, Columbus, Sacagawea, and Captain Cook find new company in...

Unfurling a tapestry of surprising and historically overlooked figures spanning forty centuries and six continents, historian Matthew Lockwood narrates lives filled with imagination and wonder, curiosity, connection, and exchange. Familiar icons of exploration like Pocahontas, Columbus, Sacagawea, and Captain Cook find new company in...

What if humanity's most important invention wasn't the steam engine or the printing press, but a machine that you've never heard of, built by a man that history forgot?Eight billion people owe their lives to a man you've never heard of. In Forgotten, Jaime...

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - "CHILLING ... WILL KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT TURNING PAGES."--The Chicago Tribune This "remarkable piece of forensic deduction" (MARGARET ATWOOD) "captures the excitement and peril of the explorers' harrowing journey" aboard the HMS Erebus, and offers "a compelling explanation of...

Dismissed by the first Spanish explorers as a wasteland, the Grand Canyon lay virtually unnoticed for three centuries until nineteenth- century America rediscovered it and seized it as a national emblem. This extraordinary work of intellectual and environmental history tells two tales of the...

In the bestselling tradition of Hampton Sides's In the Kingdom of Ice, a "gripping adventure tale" (The Boston Globe) recounting Dutch polar explorer William Barents' three harrowing Arctic expeditions--the last of which resulted in a relentlessly challenging year-long fight for survival. The human story...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and heroism in the Gilded Age from the New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers. - "A splendid book in every way...a marvelous nonfiction thriller." --The Wall Street Journal On...

From preeminent math personality and author of The Joy of x, a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus--how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better. Without calculus, we wouldn't have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn't have unraveled...

New York Times bestselling author Mark Synnott has climbed with Alex Honnold. He's scaled Mount Everest. He's pioneered big-wall first ascents, including the north-west face of the mile-high Great Trango Tower, and skied monster first descents. But in 2022, he realized there was a...

The definitive story of the British adventurers who survived the trenches of World War I and went on to risk their lives climbing Mount Everest. On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge...

"Thrilling . . . With deep research and suspenseful storytelling, Mr. Randall reminds us that America's pre-eminence in the aviation industry was never assured and that it took a race of unlikely heroes to bring the dream of world flight to the public imagination."--Wall...

"Thrilling . . . With deep research and suspenseful storytelling, Mr. Randall reminds us that America's pre-eminence in the aviation industry was never assured and that it took a race of unlikely heroes to bring the dream of world flight to the public imagination."--Wall...

National Outdoor Book Awards Winner Winner of the BANFF Adventure Travel Award"A thrilling and harrowing story. If it's a cliche to say I couldn't put this book down, well, too bad: I couldn't put this book down." --Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins...

Drawing on the amazing story of Shackleton and his polar exploration team's survival against all odds, author Dennis N. T. Perkins demonstrates the importance of a strong leader in times of adversity, uncertainty, and change.Part adventure tale and part leadership guide, Leading at the...