"One vital piece of equipment has been a constant in explorers' kits for centuries of adventure--the sketchbook or journal. Often private, they are records of immediate experiences, insight, and discovery, and in their pages we can see what the explorers themselves encountered. Here are carefully selected excerpts from 70 such sketchbooks from explorers through history to the present, records by men and women who journeyed into frozed wastelands,...

"In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg. When the India Office recruits Merrick for an expedition to fetch quinine--essential for the treatment of malaria--from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea. Nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is desperate to escape the strange...

Set against the backdrop of World War I, with western civilization on the edge of calamity, the first installment in The Explorers Guild series concerns the Guild's quest to find the golden city of Buddhist myth. The search will take them from the Polar North to the Mongolian deserts, through the underground canals of Asia to deep inside the Himalayas, before the fabled city finally divulges its secrets and the globe-spanning journey plays out to...

"1855: Virginia Reeve is summoned by an eccentric Brit with a compelling offer. Lady Jane Franklin wants her to lead a dozen women into the Arctic in search of the ships of her husband's lost expedition, and she's willing to pay handsomely. All four search attempts Lady Franklin has sponsored have failed. She has decided only a radical new approach can succeed: let women make the decisions. Lady Franklin will disavow all knowledge of the expedition...

Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Winchester illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings and ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.

Archeologist Amelia and her family are sent to the Nubian desert to find the explorer Willoughby Forth.

Photographs and text examine the history of explorers and exploration, and highlight many of their discoveries.

An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs--these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.--From publisher description....