Discovery History

This is the story of the Italian tourist who became the first European to completely cross Asia. After returning home, he wrote a book about the amazing things he had seen. Even today, people still love hearing about his adventures!

From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth, the Renaissance.

In 1620, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and made friends with Wampanoag people who gave them corn. RIGHT? WRONG! It was months before the Pilgrims met any Wampanoag people, and nobody gave anybody corn that day.

By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only 24, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries.

Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of 12 American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara. The ordeal of these men - who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback - is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.

When we think about the origins of modern science we usually begin in Europe. We remember the great minds of Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. But the history of science is not, and has never been, a uniquely European endeavor. Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques that came from Arabic and Persian texts. Newton’s laws of motion used astronomical observations made in Asia and Africa. When Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species, he consulted a sixteenth-century Chinese encyclopedia.

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university - a history major, no less! - he's reached middle age with a third-grader's grasp of early America. In fact, he's mislaid more than a century of American history, the period separating Columbus' landing in 1492 from the arrival of English colonists at Jamestown in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between?

Blending high adventure with history, this chronicle of 100 astonishing discoveries from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the fabulous “Lost City of the Monkey God” tells incredible stories of how explorers and archaeologists have uncovered the clues that illuminate our past.

Ejnar Mikkelsen was devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary’s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition’s boat needed repair.

For as long as people have traveled to distant lands, they have brought home objects to certify the journey. More than mere merchandise, these travel souvenirs take on a personal and cultural meaning that goes beyond the object itself. Drawing on several millennia of examples—from the relic-driven quests of early Christians, to the mass-produced tchotchkes that line the shelves of a Disney gift shop—travel writer Rolf Potts delves into a complicated history that explores issues of authenticity, cultural obligation, market forces, human suffering, and self-presentation.

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America 70 years before Columbus.

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, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip. Most on board would never see him again.

A remarkable true story of adventure, betrayal, and survival set in one of the world's most inhospitable places. In 1906, from atop a snow-swept hill in the ice fields northwest of Greenland, hundreds of miles from another human being, Commander Robert E. Peary spotted a line of mysterious peaks looming in the distance. He called this unexplored realm "Crocker Land". Scientists and explorers agreed that the world-famous explorer had discovered a new continent rising from the frozen Arctic Ocean.

This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler's List child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Most notable is the lack of rancour, the lack of venom, and the abundance of dignity in Mr Leyson's telling. The Boy on the Wooden Box is a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you've ever read.

Christopher Columbus is one of the most famous explorers of all time, but he was neither the first nor last adventurer to ever stumble upon a great discovery. From the Silk Road of Asia to the icy shores of Antarctica, our knowledge of the world today is in large part due to several intrepid pioneers, risking life and limb for the sake of exploration. After all, setting off into the dark unknown requires an enormous amount of bravery. But every explorer quickly learns that courage and curiosity aren't enough to save you if you can't read a map or trespass on somebody else's land!

From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history.

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" So goes the signature introduction of New York Herald star journalist Henry Morton Stanley to renowned explorer Dr. David Livingstone, who had been missing for six years in the wilds of Africa. Into Africa ushers us into the meeting of these remarkable men. In 1866, when Livingstone journeyed into the heart of the African continent in search of the Nile's source, the land was rough, unknown to Europeans, and inhabited by man-eating tribes.

The heroes of each generation reflect the conditions, priorities, and goals of the era in which they reside. In the United States and throughout Europe, the wilderness explorer enjoyed widespread public adulation long before leading sports figures, rock stars, and astronauts of later decades. The ingenuity of the Industrial Revolution gave way to early manned flight, and other breakthroughs in communication and travel.

In The Normans, Lars Brownworth follows their story, from the first shock of a Viking raid on an Irish monastery to the exile of the last Norman Prince of Antioch. In the process, he brings to vivid life the Norman tapestry's rich cast of characters: figures like Rollo the Walker, William Iron-Arm, Tancred the Monkey King, and Robert Guiscard. The Normans presents a fascinating glimpse of a time when a group of restless adventurers had the world at their fingertips.

This beautiful literary collection explores the spectacular natural features of Yosemite through the eyes of some of the most extraordinarily talented writers. In 1851, Lafayette Bunnell chronicled his travels with the Mariposa Battalion, the first non-natives to visit Yosemite Valley. Following in his footsteps, Theodore Roosevelt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Clarence King, Frederick Law Olmsted, Joaquin Miller, and Horace Greeley made their pilgrimages and were moved to recount their observations. Included here as well is the work of John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club.