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Round About the Earth
- Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
For almost 500 years, human beings have been finding ways to circle the Earth - by sail, steam, or liquid fuel; by cycling, driving, flying, going into orbit, even by using their own bodily power. The story begins with the first centuries of circumnavigation, when few survived the attempt: In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with five ships and 270 men, but only one ship and 35 men returned, not including Magellan, who died in the Philippines. Starting with these dangerous voyages, Joyce Chaplin takes us on a trip of our own as we travel with Francis Drake, William Dampier, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and James Cook.
Eventually sea travel grew much safer and passengers came on board. The most famous was Charles Darwin, but some intrepid women became circumnavigators too - a Lady Brassey, for example. Circumnavigation became a fad, as captured in Jules Verne's classic novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Once continental railroads were built, circumnavigators could traverse sea and land. Newspapers sponsored racing contests, and people sought ways to distinguish themselves - by bicycling around the world, for instance, or by sailing solo. Steamships turned round-the-world travel into a luxurious experience, as with the tours of Thomas Cook & Son. Famous authors wrote up their adventures, including Mark Twain and Jack London and Elizabeth Jane Cochrane (better known as Nellie Bly). Finally humans took to the skies to circle the globe in airplanes. Not much later, Sputnik, Gagarin, and Glenn pioneered a new kind of circumnavigation - in orbit.
Through it all, the desire to take on the planet has tested the courage and capacity of the bold men and women who took up the challenge. Their exploits show us why we think of the Earth as home. Round About the Earth is itself a thrilling adventure.
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Fascinating stories, delivery sometimes cringe-y
- By Oliver on 10-02-14
By: Michael Rank
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Barrow's Boys
- By: Fergus Fleming
- Narrated by: James Gillies
- Length: 17 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Barrow's Boys is a spellbinding account of perilous journeys to uncharted areas under the most challenging conditions. Fergus Fleming captures the passion for exploration that led a band of men into situations that would humble today's bravest adventurers.
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Wow
- By Robert B. Golson on 07-05-17
By: Fergus Fleming
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The Man Who Ate His Boots
- The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
- By: Anthony Brandt
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of 19th-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the 16th century: Find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea route over Northern Canada. For the next 35 years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route.
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They don't get any better than this
- By Christopher on 08-15-14
By: Anthony Brandt
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Falling Upwards
- How We Took to the Air
- By: Richard Holmes
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air and so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject.
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A Significant Factual-Interpretative Error
- By William P. Mitchell on 04-01-20
By: Richard Holmes
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Chasing Venus
- The Race to Measure the Heavens
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the earth and the sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system - but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs: eight years later, the scientists would have another opportunity to succeed.
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Fascinating history, beautifully told
- By GC1 on 04-26-16
By: Andrea Wulf
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Longitude
- The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
- By: Dava Sobel
- Narrated by: Kate Reading, Neil Armstrong
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1714, England's Parliament offered a huge reward to anyone whose method of measuring longitude could be proven successful. The scientific establishment--from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton--had mapped the heavens in its certainty of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had been able to do on land. And the race was on....
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To hear Neil Armstongs Voice
- By Boots on 01-19-13
By: Dava Sobel
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The Great Race
- The Race Between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia
- By: David Hill
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of the same island. And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia.
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The Story of Australia that I Never Knew
- By MarkH on 04-05-13
By: David Hill
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Farther Than Any Man
- The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the annals of seafaring and exploration, there is one name that immediately evokes visions of the open ocean, billowing sails, visiting strange, exotic lands previously uncharted, and civilizations never before encountered - Captain James Cook. Full of realistic action, lush descriptions of places and events, and fascinating historical characters such as King George III and the soon-to-be-notorious Master William Bligh, Dugard's gripping account of the life and death of Captain James Cook is a thrilling story of a discoverer hell-bent on going farther than any man.
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Sloppy History
- By Kyle P. Dalton on 04-06-18
By: Martin Dugard
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Wolf of the Deep
- Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama
- By: Stephen Fox
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In July 1862, Confederate Captain Raphael Semmes took command of a secret new warship. At the helm of the Alabama, he became the most hated and feared man along the Union coast, as well as a Confederate legend. Now, with unparalleled authority, depth, and a vivid sense of the excitement and danger of the time, Stephen Fox describes Captain Semmes's remarkable wartime exploits.
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Wolf of the Deep
- By Sammi on 08-18-07
By: Stephen Fox
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The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation
- Oxford University Press: Pivotal Moments in US History
- By: Thomas Kessner
- Narrated by: Bob McGraw
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In late May 1927 an inexperienced and unassuming 25-year-old Air Mail pilot from rural Minnesota stunned the world by making the first non-stop transatlantic flight. A spectacular feat of individual daring and collective technological accomplishment, Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris ushered in America's age of commercial aviation.
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Flawed but Worthwhile
- By Ray Daniels on 11-11-22
By: Thomas Kessner
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Sea of Glory
- America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842
- By: Nathaniel Philbrick
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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America's first frontier was not the West; it was the sea, and no one writes more eloquently about that watery wilderness than Nathaniel Philbrick. In his best-selling In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick probed the nightmarish dangers of the vast Pacific. Now, in an epic sea adventure, he writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen - the US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842.
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A good solid voyage of discovery
- By Ken Sundermeyer on 06-18-05
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Ninety Percent of Everything
- Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate
- By: Rose George
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales. Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.
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I was quite mislead by the title.....
- By Steve on 10-20-17
By: Rose George
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Pan Am at War
- How the Airline Secretly Helped America Fight World War II
- By: Mark Cotta Vaz, John H. Hill
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Pan Am at War chronicles the airline's historic role in advancing aviation and serving America's national interest before and during World War II. From its inception, Pan American Airways operated as the "wings of democracy", spanning six continents and placing the country at the leading edge of international aviation. At the same time, it was clandestinely helping to fight America's wars.
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Disappointing Presentation
- By JP on 04-01-20
By: Mark Cotta Vaz, and others