Marco Polo almost single-handedly introduced fourteenth-century Europe to the civilizations of Central Asia and China. Now this stunningly illustrated volume, edited by renowned historian Morris Rossabi, offers the complete text of Polo's travelogue (in the respected Yule-Cordier translation), enhanced with more than 200 images--including illuminated manuscripts, paintings, photographs, and maps. Sidebars and dozens of informative footnotes combine...

Chronicles Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the glove in the sixteenth century, including first-person accounts previously unavailable in English.

"This is a great book about life at remote bases in Canada's far north as seen by a young English boy who went there by himself to see the world and got more than he could have bargained for. Beautifully written." --Sir Ranulph Fiennes "As spare, gleaming, and exhilarating as the Arctic wastes and the gentle, stoic Eskimos who had mastery of this realm . . . The book evokes the frozen seas, whale hunts, snow plains and storms that intimidated those...

A travelogue detailing Charles Dickens's tour of North America. In January of 1842, Charles Dickens and his wife, Kate, traveled from Liverpool to Boston. At the time, Dickens had already attained a tremendous level of literary success and fame, and the author hoped his travels would help him gain insight into the New World that had captivated the English imagination. Over the ensuing 6 months, Dickens explored the East Coast and Great Lakes regions...

A Brown Man in Russia describes the fantastical travels of a young, colored American traveler as he backpacks across Russia in the middle of winter via the Trans-Siberian. The book is a hybrid between the curmudgeonly travelogues of Paul Theroux and the philosophical works of Robert Pirsig. Styled in the vein of Hofstadter, the author lays out a series of absurd, but true stories followed by a deeper rumination on what they mean and why

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For most of his life, an explorer fought to conquer the North Pole On March 1, 1909, only 413 miles of treacherous ice separated Robert E. Peary from realizing his lifelong dream of becoming the first man to set foot on the North Pole. On that dark morning on Canada's Ellesmere Island, it was cold enough to freeze a bottle of brandy. Though appearing solid, the ice sat atop seawater, and shifted violently according to the whims of the ocean below....

Three hundred nautical miles from shore, I'm cold and sick and afraid. I pray for reprieve. I long for solid ground. And I can't help but ask myself, What the hell was I thinking? When Sue Williams set sail for the North Atlantic, it wasn't a mid-life crisis. She had no affinity for the sea. And she didn't have an adventure-seeking bone in her body. In the wake of a perfect storm of personal events, it suddenly became clear: her sons were adults...

Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Lure of the Trade Winds: Two Women Sailing the Pacific Ocean transports readers to a place where few have gone before: aboard a thirty-four-foot boat, cruising the Pacific Ocean. Join author, Jeannine Talley, as she and her sailing partner, Joy Smith, embark on the journey of a lifetime. Each day is a new adventure aboard the Banshee. Talley and her partner are stranded on a reef in Vanuatu, contract malaria, rescue a wrecked boat, visit a skull site...

"Four travelers meet in Bolivia and set off into the heart of the Amazon rainforest, but what begins as a dream adventure quickly deteriorates into a dangerous nightmare, and after weeks of wandering in the dense undergrowth, the four backpackers split up into two groups. When a terrible rafting accident separates him from his partner, Yossi is forced to survive for weeks alone against one of the wildest backdrops on the planet. Stranded with no equipment,...