Biographies 
Showing 1 - 17 of 17
There are a total of 190 valid entries on the list.
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Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"A stunning, revelatory memoir about a 330-mile walk from Washington, D.C., to New York City--an unforgettable pilgrimage to the heart of America across some of our oldest common ground. Neil King Jr's desire to walk from Washington, D.C., to New York City began as a whim and soon became an obsession. Determined to rediscover what matters in life and to see our national story with new eyes, Neil turned north with a small satchel on his back and one...
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Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists...
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"'Don't take women when you go exploring!' In 1932, Roy Chapman Andrews, the president of the Explorers Club, told hundreds of female students at Barnard College that women and exploration could never mix. He obviously didn't know a thing about either. [This book] is the ... story of the women who broke apart the stuffy men's club and founded the Society of Woman Geographers (SWG), and how some key members--including Blair Niles, Amelia Earhart, Gloria...
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"After returning to the United States, Kennan set out to generate public outrage over the plight of the exiles, writing the renowned Siberia and the Exile System. He then went on a nine-year lecture tour to describe the suffering of the Siberian exiles, intensifying the newly emerging diplomatic conflicts between the two countries which last to this day. In a book that ranks with the greatest adventure stories, Gregory Wallance's Into Siberia is a...
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Description:
"In an engaging and anecdotal social history, Maiden Voyages explores how women's lives were transformed by the Golden Age of ocean liner travel between Europe and North America. During the early twentieth century, transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners. It was an extraordinary undertaking made by many women, whose lives were transformed by their journeys between the Old World and the New. Some travelled for leisure, some...
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Description:
"In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Mount Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceives his own crazy, beautiful plan: he will fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit--all utterly alone. Wilson doesn't know how to climb. He barely knows how to fly. But he has the right plane, the right equipment, and...
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Description:
"A mother-daughter adventure around the world in pursuit of self-discovery, a family reckoning, and Asian American defiance"--
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"From the Edgar-nominated author of the bestselling 'Mrs. Sherlock Holmes' comes the true story of a woman's quest to Africa in the 1900s to find her missing fiancé, and the adventure that ensues. In 1910, Olive MacLeod, a thirty-year-old, redheaded Scottish aristocrat, received word that her fiancé, the famous naturalist Boyd Alexander, was missing in Africa. So she went to find him. Olive the Lionheart is the thrilling true story of her astonishing...
Description:
"Why does it make sense to Ethiopian runners to get up at 3am to run up and down a hill? Who would choose to train on almost impossibly steep and rocky terrain, in hyena territory? And how come Ethiopian men hold six of the top ten fastest marathon times ever? Michael Crawley spent fifteen months in Ethiopia training alongside (and sometimes a fair way behind) runners at all levels of the sport, from night watchmen hoping to change their lives to...
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Description:
"A lyrical and evocative collection of personal stories from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun, in which the queen of wanderlust reflects on the comforts of home. While Frances Mayes is known for her travels, she has always sought a sense of home wherever she goes. In this poetic testament to the power of place in our lives, Mayes reflects on "home," from the earliest imprint of four walls to the startling discoveries...
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Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
"In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from Maine, embarked on an impossible journey. She had no relatives left, she'd lost her family farm to back taxes, and her doctor had just given her two years to live--but only if she 'lived restfully.' ... Instead, she decided she wanted to see the Pacific Ocean just once before she died. She bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees, loaded up her horse, and headed...
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Average Rating:
3.3 stars
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"The riveting story of Dick Conant, an American folk hero who, over the course of more than twenty years, solo canoed thousands of miles of American rivers--and then in 2016 disappeared off the coast of North Carolina"--
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Average Rating:
4 stars
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Description:
"Does George Washington still matter? The ... author argues for his unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new President through the former colonies, now an unsure nation. A new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into one narrative. When George Washington became president in 1798, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative...
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Average Rating:
4 stars
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Description:
"A brilliant portrait of two American giants, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and America entering the automobile age, told through the fascinating but little-known narrative of the summer road trips taken by Edison and Ford"--
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Average Rating:
4.9 stars
Description:
"An epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day ... On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a...