'A masterpiece.' New Yorker'Wholly riveting, brilliantly researched.' Evening Standard'A meticulous investigation into the seeds of disaster... fascinating, uncomfortable reading.' Sunday TimesIn 1968, Donald Crowhurst was trying to market a nautical navigation device he had developed, and saw the Sunday Times Golden Globe round the world sailing race as the perfect opportunity to showcase...

'A masterpiece.' New Yorker'Wholly riveting, brilliantly researched.' Evening Standard'A meticulous investigation into the seeds of disaster... fascinating, uncomfortable reading.' Sunday TimesIn 1968, Donald Crowhurst was trying to market a nautical navigation device he had developed, and saw the Sunday Times Golden Globe round the world sailing race as the perfect opportunity to showcase...

Sailing to California from Boston around Cape Horn, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST is both an adventure and an eloquent account of life at sea in the early nineteenth century. Richard Henry Dana is only nineteen when he escapes the patrician world of Boston and Harvard for the arduous voyage. The result is an astonishing book, filled with vivid descriptions of storms, whales, and the ship's mad captain, terrible hardship and magical beauty, and fascinating historical detail.Richard Henr...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the definitive book on Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the most momentous expedition in American history and one of the great adventure stories of all time.In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia ...

The legendary reporter and author of The Right Stuff takes on Darwin, Chomsky, and the origin of language in "his boldest bit of dueling yet" ( The New York Times).Tom Wolfe, the great journalist-provocateur, aims his piercing wit at the presiding theories of what makes us human. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech—not evolution—is responsible for humanity's com...

Ever felt like stepping off the treadmill, taking a year off work and sailing a yacht around Australia? Well, if you are reading this then it's a good chance you have, during an occasional daydream, let go the mooring lines of work and family and quietly left the harbour to see what lies around the next headland or what white sandy bay awaits. Rob Manning and Diana Neggo turned that very same daydream into a reality and Telltales is their story. What's unique about this tale is that Rob an...

A fascinating, moving novel based on the real life of Dr Ernst Dieffenbach: scientist, explorer, revolutionary, outcast. Dieffenbach arrived in New Zealand in 1839 as a naturalist. What he discovered was fascinating, but what his prescient records didn't reveal was his own intriguing story. This compelling novel turns the focus on Dieffenbach. As a young idealist, he had plotted a revolution in the name of equality. Imprisoned and then exiled, first from Giessen, then Stra...

After Royal Navy captain Sir John Franklin disappeared in the Arctic in 1846 while seeking the Northwest Passage, the search for his two ships, Erebus and Terror, and survivors of his expedition became one of the most exhaustive quests of the 19th century. Despite tantalizing clues, the ships were never found, and the fate of Franklin’s expedition passed into legend as one of the North’s great and enduring mysteries.Anthony Dalton explores the eventful and fascinating life of this ...

The final letters and diary entries of Robert Falcon Scott – written in his last days, while hopelessly trapped in a tiny tent by a raging blizzard on the Great Ice Barrier – are among the most poignant and haunting passages ever penned. ‘Had we lived,’ he wrote, ‘I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.’Scott’s diaries, discovered with his body the next spring and then used as...

Kim Sturgess was a weekend sailor: he enjoyed club racing and several brief sailing holidays, but had never attempted a substantial expedition. Reaching the age of fifty focused the mind and he decided to sail around Britain. While many cruising sailors would not contemplate a 1900 nautical mile voyage, he broke the voyage into a series of day sails, making it an achievable ambition for him, largely single-handed, and for many other weekend sailors who might dream of sailing around their h...

As the Dutch replied in darkness with shouts and trumpet calls from the decks of their ships, the warriors must have been mystified by these creatures who entered into their rituals, yet used exotic instruments and spoke an unintelligible tongue.With the publication of her book Two Worlds, Anne Salmond introduced a penetrating rewriting of our traditional views of first contacts between the Māori and European worlds, helping us to see these meetings with fresh eye...

After tough assignments as a Canadian diplomat abroad, Nicholas Coghlan and his wife Jenny unwind by sailing Bosun Bird, a 27foot sailboat, from Cape Town, South Africa, across the South Atlantic and into the stormy winter waters around Tierra del Fuego, South America. Coghlan recounts earlier adventures in Patagonia when, taking time off from his job as a schoolteacher in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s, he and Jenny explored the region of southern Argentina and Chile over three successive...