The future of our food depends on seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the first to recognize this fact, botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison. But in the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat, Vavilov had traveled o…
Castaways (or Naufragios) is the first major narrative of the exploration of North America by Europeans (1528-1536). It is also an enthralling story of adventure and survival against unimaginable odds. Its author, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a fortune-seeking sixteenth-century S…
The intriguing theory of a land bridge periodically linking Siberia and Alaska during the coldest pulsations of the Ice Ages had been much debated since Jose de Acosta, a Spanish missionary working in Mexico and Peru, first proposed the idea of a connection between the continent…
On the great Pacific discovery expeditions of the "long eighteenth century", naturalists for the first time were commonly found aboard ships sailing forth from European ports. Lured by intoxicating opportunities to discover exotic and perhaps lucrative flora and fauna unknown at…
On the great Pacific discovery expeditions of the "long eighteenth century", naturalists for the first time were commonly found aboard ships sailing forth from European ports. Lured by intoxicating opportunities to discover exotic and perhaps lucrative flora and fauna unknown at…
The baseline at Yaruquí -- The problem of the Earth's shape -- Preparations for the mission -- Finding Quito -- Degree of difficulty -- City of Kings -- The triangles of Peru -- Death and the surgeon -- The War of Jenkins's Ear -- The dance of the stars -- The impossible return …
In the 1920's and 1930's there were adventures to be lived and fortunes to be made by strong young men in the outback of Australia and the gold fields of New Guinea. This is the diary of five years spent in hot pursuit-not of honor and glory, but of excitement and riches-by one …
It was controversial explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson who sent four young men and Ada Blackjack into the far North to colonize desolate, uninhabited Wrangel Island. Only two of the men had set foot in the Arctic before. They took with them six months' worth of supplies on Stefanss…
