Discovery and exploration 
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There are a total of 190 valid entries on the list.
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Average Rating:
5 stars
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"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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Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"The true, harrowing story of the ill-fated 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition and the two men who came to define it. In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world's greatest living ice navigator. The expedition's visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame. Just six weeks after the Karluk departed,...
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Average Rating:
4.6 stars
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The astonishing saga of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as Time magazine put it, "defined heroism." Alfred Lansing's scrupulously researched and brilliantly narrated book has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the Endurance's fateful trip. This new edition has been augmented with maps and illustrations.
"Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned...
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Average Rating:
5 stars
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"Greenland: remote, mysterious, ice-covered rock, population 56,000, in the middle of the North Atlantic. Why do we care so much about it? Because locked within the the vast and frozen "white desert"--the nickname early explorers gave it--that covers eighty percent of the land are some of the most profound secrets of our planet--clues about where we've been, and where we might be headed. And now, with the ice sheet melting at an unprecedented rate,...
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Average Rating:
3.5 stars
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Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the Lost Franklin Expedition of 1845―whose two ships and crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice―with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the incredible discovery of the flagship's wreck in 2014.
Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story:
...Author:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"[The author] ... combines a gripping tale of survival with a sweeping history of the great Age of Exploration--a time of hope, adventure, and seemingly unlimited geographic frontiers. At the story's center is William Barents, one of the 16th century's greatest navigators whose larger-than-life ambitions and obsessive quest to chart a path through the deepest, most remote regions of the Arctic ended in both tragedy and glory"--
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"The riveting story of one of the greatest but least-known sagas in the history of exploration from David Roberts, the 'dean of adventure writing.' By 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than Greenland. The native Inuit had occupied the relatively accessible west coast for centuries. The east coast, however, was another story. In August 1930, Henry George Watkins (nicknamed Gino), a 23-year-old explorer, led thirteen scientists and...
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Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Based on the author's exhaustive research, the incredible true story of the Greely Expedition, one of the most harrowing adventures in the annals of polar exploration. In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible...
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Average Rating:
4.7 stars
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The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization — culminating in a stunning medical mystery.
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated...
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated...
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The harrowing true survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly awry-with the ship frozen in ice and the crew trapped inside for the entire sunless, Antarctic winter. As the Belgica's men teetered on the brink, de Gerlache relied increasingly on two young officers whose friendship had blossomed in captivity: the expedition's lone American, Dr. Frederick Cook--half genius, half con man--whose later infamy would overshadow his brilliance...
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"For millennia the location of the Nile River's headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, ... European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe-- and extend their colonial empires. Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England. Burton spoke twenty-nine languages, and was a decorated soldier ... Speke was a young aristocrat...
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Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"For more than a millennium, Polynesians occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, an enormous triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Sailing in large, double-hulled canoes, without the benefit of maps, writing, or metal tools, these ancient mariners were the first and, until the era of European discovery, the only people ever to have reached this part of the globe. Today, they are widely acknowledged as the world's...
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"The extraordinary story of how the Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship, was found in the most hostile sea on Earth in 2022. On 21 November 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, finally succumbed to the crushing ice. Its crew watched in silence as the stern rose twenty feet in the air and then, it was gone. The miraculous escape and survival of all twenty-eight men on board have entered legend. And yet, the iconic ship that bore them...
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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...