Women Explorers

>"Log Book: Instrument flying. Slow descent, first. Going down fast. It takes a lot to make my ears hurt. Five thousand now. Awfully wet. Water dripping in window. Port motor coughing. Sounds as if all motors were cutting. Bill opens her wide to try to clear. Sounds rotten on the right...." This true-life adventure story is Amelia Earhart's personal account of an historic flight.

“You’re hiking how far solo?” "How are you going to hike the entire John Muir Trail when you’ve never even been backpacking before?” These were the two most common questions that accompanied baffled looks from Christy’s corporate coworkers when she mentioned her plans. Legitimate questions Christy had pondered herself. Yet, she couldn’t fully express the pull to hike more than 220 miles in the California High Sierra Mountains. She knew only that her whole being told her that she needed to.

As a teenager, in a fit of rage toward her father, Jan pits herself against a steep rock face near their cottage. At the top, fired up by the victory, she sets her sights on the improbable dream of climbing mountains. By age 20, she's a nomadic climber with a magnetic attraction to misadventures and the wrong men. Jan finally finds the love of her life, an affable Banff climber. When he is killed in an avalanche in Alaska, a grieving Jan finds comfort in the arms of another extreme alpinist. Before long they are married, with a baby on the way.

In Rising, Wood reflects on the 70 days she spent on Everest and on the pivotal experiences and influences that brought her to that staggeringly beautiful and austere corner of the world. Beyond the physical hardships, she faced personal challenges as an outlier in the male bastion of Himalayan climbing. These were compounded by the vexing presence of her past mentor and lover with his new girlfriend on the American team climbing on the same side of the mountain.

Robert Falcon Scott and the men of his polar expedition were heroes of their age, enduring tremendous hardships to further the reputation of the empire they served. But they were also husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. Now for the first time, and with unprecedented access to family archives, Katherine MacInnes retells the story of the race for the South Pole from the perspective of the women whose lives would be forever changed by it, five women who offer a window into a lost age.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, based on her own childhood and later life, are still beloved classics almost a century after she began writing them. Now young listeners will see just how similar Laura's true-life story was to her books. Born in 1867 in the "Big Woods" in Wisconsin, Laura experienced both the hardship and the adventure of living on the frontier.

Written and read by Jessica Watson, this is the story of a remarkable girl who followed her dream and conquered the world. There is something different about adventurers, about the way their minds work. They look at the world as a place of challenges and though they know what fear is, they refuse to be hindered by it.

If you have ever questioned the meaning of your life, longed to break free, and discover its real secrets, this book is a must-read true-life story! Beginning in the very early years of her life in New Zealand, Lyse had a number of quite different but very formative experiences. These propelled her on a journey of 'self-discovery' that was to take her away from her home at the age of sixteen. Many adventures were to follow. Eventually, she traveled to Tibet, Nepal, and India where she met the remarkable beings who were to become her teachers during the next three decades of her life. In the...

Amelia Earhart captured the hearts and imaginations of people around the world when she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane. This audiobook, her personal account of the historic flight, sparkles with her high-spirited charm and adventurous determination.

El amor, la alegría, la barbarie. La vida de Neus Català, explicada por ella misma y revisada a través de una ambiciosa novela magistralmente construida por Carme Martí.

Su infancia en un pequeño pueblo rural; la juventud interrumpida por la Guerra Civil española y la rápida toma de conciencia social; Barcelona, Premià de Mar y, finalmente, la retirada a pie por la frontera hasta llegar al sur de Francia; la resistencia, los maquis y el primer gran amor. Pasión y rebelión hasta el día que las SS llaman a la puerta. Prisión...

Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her lifestyle as a society woman.

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

When we remember the Second World War in the air, we think of fighter pilots and bomber crews. But what was it like for the men and women working as ground crew and in the aircraft factories who also played a crucial role in defeating Hitler? What was it like making history? What sense did these individuals have of what they were doing, either at the time or later? Did they feel they were caught up in the tide of great events? Or were they simply doing their demanding and often dangerous duty?

Life, Love, and a Hijacking: My Pan Am Memoir is an insightful, hilarious, sometimes seat-gripping look at the adventures of an ebullient flight attendant, who flew for the world’s most iconic airline, Pan Am. With the world at her fingertips, anything was possible... even the improbable. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the narration as Wendy Knecht recounts the experiences of her lifetime. Travel with Wendy as she transforms from naive, frizzy-haired college student into a wined-and-dined, weight-checked woman of the world.

When Kathy decides to leave her abusive marriage, she is 59 years old. She’s unprepared to live on a reduced income when her estranged husband hides his assets from the court. She’s shocked by the cost of rentals in Southern California. She didn’t realize how impossible it would be to land a job at her age and after being out of the market for two decades while she raised her kids. She hasn’t anticipated that her nearly grown children would be mad at her for finally standing up for herself.

Fleeing the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and fueled by a burning desire for a better life, Apple embarks on a daring journey to pursue her doctoral education in America. With no backup plan, Apple has to make this journey work. But she has no idea that her starting place, Las Cruces, NM, is a quiet desert town—a far cry from the bustling metropolis she envisioned. Anxious, ignorant, broken, lost, and homesick, Apple is also excited, curious, and open-minded. Will she simply survive the fish-out-of-the-water situation many immigrants experience, or will she thrive?

For swimming champion Nancy Stearns Bercaw, the pool was a natural habitat. But on land, she could never shake the feeling of being a fish out of water. Starting at age two, Nancy devoted her life to swimming, even qualifying for the 1988 Olympic Trials in the fifty-meter freestyle event. But nearly two decades later, when she hung up her cap and goggles, she was confronted with a different kind of challenge: learning who she was out of the lanes.

Amelia Earhart flew solo over the Atlantic, afterward receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross, and began championing the efforts of women to explore careers traditionally held by men. Tragically, just days before her 40th birthday, her plane vanished en route to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean as she neared the end of her round-the-world journey. After an exhaustive search, no trace of the plane or Amelia was ever found.

In the early twentieth century, headlines declared that "the era of women has dawned." Against this changing historical backdrop, Harriet Quimby's extraordinary life stands out as the embodiment of this tumultuous, exciting era—when flight was measured in minutes, not miles. This untold piece of feminist history unveils Quimby's incredible story: rising from humble beginnings as a dirt-poor farm girl to become a globe-trotting journalist, history-making aviator, and international celebrity.

This book honors all the women who ride motorcycles and inspires others with rebel souls to do the same. Women Who Ride is a delightful compilation by, and for, women motorcycle riders, filled with true stories from both youngsters and those with a lifetime of riding experience.