21 Best Expeditions & Discoveries Books
Expeditions & Discoveries is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Expeditions & Discoveries audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 21 Expeditions & Discoveries audiobooks below.
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Apollo 1
- By: Ryan S. Walters
- Narrator: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 9 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.29(134 ratings)
4.29(134 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDOn January 27, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee climbed into a new spacecraft perched atop a large Saturn rocket at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a routine dress rehearsal of their upcoming launch into orbit, then lessOn January 27, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee climbed into a new spacecraft perched atop a large Saturn rocket at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a routine dress rehearsal of their upcoming launch into orbit, then less than a month away. All three astronauts were experienced pilots and had dreams of one day walking on the moon, but little did they know, nor did anyone else, that once they entered the spacecraft that cold winter day they would never leave it alive. The Apollo program would be perilously close to failure before it ever got off the ground.
But rather than dooming the space program, this tragedy caused the spacecraft to be completely overhauled, creating a stellar flying machine to achieve the program’s primary goal: putting man on the moon.
Apollo 1 is a candid portrayal of the astronauts, the disaster that killed them, and its aftermath. In it, listeners will learn
how the Apollo 1 spacecraft was doomed from the start, with miles of uninsulated wiring and tons of flammable materials in a pure oxygen atmosphere, along with a hatch that wouldn’t open;how, due to political pressure, the government contract to build the Apollo 1 craft went to a bidder with an inferior plan; andhow public opinion polls were beginning to turn against the space program before the tragedy and got much worse after.
Apollo 1 is about America fulfilling its destiny of man setting foot on the moon. It’s also about the three American heroes who lost their lives in the tragedy, but whose lives were not lost in vain.
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Undaunted Courage
- By: Stephen E. Ambrose
- Narrator: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 21 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 1996
- Language: English
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4.2(51969 ratings)
4.2(51969 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDFrom 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 storiesFrom 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.
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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 River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the flora and fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
Ambrose has pieced together previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a vivid backdrop for the expedition. Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next comes Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson’s. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Quincy Adams, and many more leading political, scientific, and military figures of the turn of the century.
High adventure, high politics, suspense, drama, and diplomacy combine with high romance and personal tragedy to make this outstanding work of scholarship as readable as a novel. -
Undaunted Courage
- By: Stephen E. Ambrose
- Narrator: Cotter Smith
- Length: 4 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 1996
- Language: English
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4.2(51969 ratings)
4.2(51969 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0015.95 USDFrom 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 storiesFrom 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.
... Read more
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 River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, made the first map of the trans-Mississippi West, provided invaluable scientific data on the flora and fauna of the Louisiana Purchase territory, and established the American claim to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
Ambrose has pieced together previously unknown information about weather, terrain, and medical knowledge at the time to provide a vivid backdrop for the expedition. Lewis is supported by a rich variety of colorful characters, first of all Jefferson himself, whose interest in exploring and acquiring the American West went back thirty years. Next comes Clark, a rugged frontiersman whose love for Lewis matched Jefferson’s. There are numerous Indian chiefs, and Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition, along with the French-Indian hunter Drouillard, the great naturalists of Philadelphia, the French and Spanish fur traders of St. Louis, John Quincy Adams, and many more leading political, scientific, and military figures of the turn of the century.
High adventure, high politics, suspense, drama, and diplomacy combine with high romance and personal tragedy to make this outstanding work of scholarship as readable as a novel. -
Dreams of El Dorado
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrator: Matt Kugler
- Length: 17 hours 11 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 22, 2019
- Language: English
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4.2(1267 ratings)
4.2(1267 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.98 USD“Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope” (Hampton Sides), this masterfully told account of the American West from a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist sets a new standard as it sweeps from the California Gold Rush and beyond.In Dreams of“Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope” (Hampton Sides), this masterfully told account of the American West from a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist sets a new standard as it sweeps from the California Gold Rush and beyond.In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor’s fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants’ dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame-and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner’s persistence, the cattleman’s courage, the railroad man’s enterprise; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.... Read moreBalanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.
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The Lost Men
- By: Kelly Tyler-Lewis
- Narrator: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 6 hours 17 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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4.14(1405 ratings)
4.14(1405 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.95 USDIn 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed south aboard the Endurance to be the first to cross Antarctica. Shackleton’s endeavor is legend, but few know the astonishing story of the Ross Sea party, the support crew he dispatched to the oppositeIn 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed south aboard the Endurance to be the first to cross Antarctica. Shackleton’s endeavor is legend, but few know the astonishing story of the Ross Sea party, the support crew he dispatched to the opposite side of the continent to build a vital lifeline of food and fuel depots.
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When the Ross Sea ship, the Aurora, broke free of her moorings and disappeared in a gale in 1915, she left ten men stranded on the continent with only the clothes on their backs and little hope of rescue. Against all odds, the men decided to go forward with their mission, sledging 1,700 miles in a record-setting two-year odyssey. They never imagined that their immense sacrifice was futile — for Shackleton never set foot on the continent, and the Endurance lay crushed at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.
Inexperienced and poorly equipped, the men of the Ross Sea party endured the unspeakable suffering of malnutrition, hypothermia, and extreme weather conditions with fortitude. With their personal journals and previously unpublished documents, Kelly Tyler-Lewis brings us close to these men in their best and bleakest times and revives for us their heroic, astounding story of survival in the most hostile environment on earth. -
The Lewis and Clark Journals
- By: Gary E. Moulton
- Narrator: John Lescault
- Length: 19 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2007
- Language: English
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4.13(109 ratings)
4.13(109 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.95 USDFollowing orders from President Thomas Jefferson, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out from their wintering camp in Illinois in 1804 to search for a river passage to the Pacific Ocean. This is the riveting account of their journey. InFollowing orders from President Thomas Jefferson, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out from their wintering camp in Illinois in 1804 to search for a river passage to the Pacific Ocean. This is the riveting account of their journey.
In their own words, recorded in the famous journals of Lewis and Clark, the members of the Corps of Discovery tell their story with an immediacy and power missing from secondhand accounts. All of their triumphs and terrors are here: the thrill of seeing the vast herds of bison, the fear the captains felt when Sacagawea fell ill, the ordeal of crossing the Continental Divide. The natural wonders of an unspoiled America are here, and the lives and customs of its native peoples also vividly come to life, making for a living drama that is humorous, poignant and, at least once, tragic.
Editor Gary E. Moulton blends the narrative highlights of his definitive Nebraska edition of the Lewis and Clark journals to bring forth the voices of the enlisted men and of the Native Americans, heard for the first time alongside the words of the captains.
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Leading on the Edge
- By: Rachael Robertson
- Length: 9 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: August 23, 2021
- Language: English
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4.1(103 ratings)
4.1(103 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDWhat can an Antarctic expedition teach you about leadership? More than you might think! If you think your job is tough, try leading a one-year expedition where you’re on duty all day, every day. Where it’s cold, windy, dark andWhat can an Antarctic expedition teach you about leadership? More than you might think!
If you think your job is tough, try leading a one-year expedition where you’re on duty all day, every day. Where it’s cold, windy, dark and desolate. And you’re stuck inside with 17 strangers.
Rachael Robertson was one of the youngest people to ever lead an Antarctic expedition and one of the first women. In this incredible pressure-cooker environment, Rachael was forced to develop strategies to deal with the isolation,
scrutiny and demands of extreme leadership. With no way in, and no way out, she had to make it work.An inspiring leadership story packed with ideas, insights and strategies, Leading on the Edge will teach you how to:
* deal effectively with ambiguity and the grey areas leaders face
* generate trust and loyalty in those around you
* understand why respect is more critical than harmony
* check in on people, track progress and manage risk
* inspire through the lean times and lead through the tough times
* survive the scrutiny of leadership and look after yourself.Whether you lead or aspire to lead, this book is your guide to becoming an authentic, resilient, innovative leader who gets the best out of your team.
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Admiral of the Ocean Sea
- By: Samuel Eliot Morison
- Narrator: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 25 hours 57 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2011
- Language: English
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4.1(400 ratings)
4.1(400 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0034.95 USDAdmiral of the Ocean Sea is Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s classic biography of the greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus. It is written with the insight, energy, and authority that only someone who had himself sailed inAdmiral of the Ocean Sea is Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s classic biography of the greatest sailor of them all, Christopher Columbus. It is written with the insight, energy, and authority that only someone who had himself sailed in Columbus’ path to the New World could muster. Morison undertook this expedition in a 147-foot schooner and a 47-foot ketch, the dimensions of these craft roughly matching those of Columbus’ Santa Maria and Niña. The result is this vivid and definitive biography that accurately details the voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world.
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The Last Voyage of Columbus
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrator: Simon Jones
- Length: 6 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: June 01, 2005
- Language: English
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4.07(790 ratings)
4.07(790 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.98 USDThe Year is 1500. Christopher Columbus, stripped of his title Admiral of the Ocean Seas, waits in chains in a Caribbean prison built under his orders, looking out at the colony that he founded, nurtured, and ruled for eight years. Less than a decadeThe Year is 1500. Christopher Columbus, stripped of his title Admiral of the Ocean Seas, waits in chains in a Caribbean prison built under his orders, looking out at the colony that he founded, nurtured, and ruled for eight years. Less than a decade after discovering the New World, he has fallen into disgrace, accused by the royal court of being a liar, a secret Jew, and a foreigner who sought to steal the riches of the New World for himself.... Read moreThe tall, freckled explorer with the aquiline nose, whose flaming red hair long ago turned gray, passes his days in prayer and rumination, trying to ignore the waterfront gallows that are all too visible from his cell. And he plots for one great escape, one last voyage to the ends of the earth, one final chance to prove himself. What follows is one of history’s most epic — and forgotten — adventures. Columbus himself would later claim that his fourth voyage was his greatest. It was without doubt his most treacherous. Of the four ships he led into the unknown, none returned. Columbus would face the worst storms a European explorer had ever encountered. He would battle to survive amid mutiny, war, and a shipwreck that left him stranded on a desert isle for almost a year.
On his tail were his enemies, sent from Europe to track him down. In front of him: the unknown. Martin Dugard’s thrilling account of this final voyage brings Columbus to life as never before-adventurer, businessman, father, lover, tyrant, and hero.
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The Fourth Part of the World
- By: Toby Lester
- Narrator: Toby Lester
- Length: 15 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: November 20, 2009
- Language: English
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4.06(1094 ratings)
4.06(1094 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USD“Old maps lead you to strange and unexpected places, and none does so more ineluctably than the subject of this book: the giant, beguiling WaldseemUller world map of 1507.” So begins this remarkable story of the map that gave America its“Old maps lead you to strange and unexpected places, and none does so more ineluctably than the subject of this book: the giant, beguiling WaldseemUller world map of 1507.” So begins this remarkable story of the map that gave America its name. For millennia Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Africa, and Asia. They drew the three continents in countless shapes and sizes on their maps, but occasionally they hinted at the existence of a “fourth part of the world,” a mysterious, inaccessible place, separated from the rest by a vast expanse of ocean. It was a land of myth-until 1507, that is, when Martin WaldseemUller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France, made it real. Columbus had died the year before convinced that he had sailed to Asia, but WaldseemUller and Ringmann, after reading about the Atlantic discoveries of Columbus’s contemporary Amerigo Vespucci, came to a startling conclusion: Vespucci had reached the fourth part of the world. To celebrate his achievement, WaldseemUller and Ringmann printed a huge map, for the first time showing the New World surrounded by water and distinct from Asia, and in Vespucci’s honor they gave this New World a name: America. The Fourth Part of the World is the story behind that map, a thrilling saga of geographical and intellectual exploration, full of outsize thinkers and voyages. Taking a kaleidoscopic approach, Toby Lester traces the origins of our modern worldview. His narrative sweeps across continents and centuries, zeroing in on different portions of the map to reveal strands of ancient legend, Biblical prophecy, classical learning, medieval exploration, imperial ambitions, and more. In Lester’s telling the map comes alive: Marco Polo and the early Christian missionaries trek across Central Asia and China; Europe’s early humanists travel to monastic libraries to recover ancient texts; Portuguese merchants round up the first West African slaves; Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci make their epic voyages of discovery; and finally, vitally, Nicholas Copernicus makes an appearance, deducing from the new geography shown on the WaldseemUller map that the earth could not lie at the center of the cosmos. The map literally altered humanity’s worldview. One thousand copies of the map were printed, yet only one remains. Discovered accidentally in 1901 in the library of a German castle it was bought in 2003 for the unprecedented sum of $10 million by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. Lavishly illustrated with rare maps and diagrams, The Fourth Part of the World is the story of that map: the dazzling story of the geographical and intellectual journeys that have helped us decipher our world.
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Skeletons on the Zahara
- By: Dean King
- Narrator: Michael Prichard
- Length: 12 hours 58 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: April 01, 2014
- Language: English
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4.06(9511 ratings)
4.06(9511 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USD -
Down the Great Unknown
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrator: Danny Campbell
- Length: 13 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: June 11, 2019
- Language: English
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4.02(1781 ratings)
4.02(1781 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USDDrawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book to tell the full, dramatic story of the Powell expedition. On May 24, 1869 a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine mountainDrawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book to tell the full, dramatic story of the Powell expedition.
On May 24, 1869 a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. The Grand Canyon, not explored before, was as mysterious as Atlantis—and as perilous. The ten men set out from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory down the Colorado in four wooden rowboats. Ninety-nine days later, six half-starved wretches came ashore near Callville, Arizona.
Lewis and Clark opened the West in 1803, six decades later Powell and his scruffy band aimed to resolve the West’s last mystery. A brilliant narrative, a thrilling journey, a cast of memorable heroes—all these mark Down the Great Unknown, the true story of the last epic adventure on American soil.
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Conquistadors
- By: Michael Wood
- Narrator: John Telfer
- Length: 10 hours 41 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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3.94(508 ratings)
3.94(508 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDFollowing in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes asFollowing in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hern+in Cort+(r)s, Francisco, and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. He also follows parts of Orellana’s extraordinary voyage of discovery down the Amazon and of Cabeza de Vaca’s arduous journey across America to the Pacific. Few stories in history match these conquests for sheer drama, endurance, and distances covered, and Wood’s gripping narrative brings them fully to life.
Wood reconstructs both sides of the conquest, drawing from sources such as Bernal Diaz’s eyewitness account, Cort+(r)s’s own letters, and the Aztec texts recorded not long after the fall of Mexico. Wood’s evocative story of his own journey makes a compelling connection with the sixteenth-century world as he relates the present-day customs, rituals, and oral traditions of the people he meets. He offers powerful descriptions of the rivers, mountains, and ruins he encounters on his trip, comparing what he has seen and experienced with the historical record.
As well as being one of the pivotal events in history, the Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of the most cruel and devastating. Wood grapples with the moral legacy of the European invasion and with the implications of an episode in history that swept away civilizations, religions, and ways of life. The stories in Conquistadors are not only of conquest, heroism, and greed but of changes in the way we see the world, history and civilization, justice and human rights.
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Titanic’s Last Secrets
- By: Brad Matsen
- Narrator: Henry Leyva
- Length: 6 hours 5 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 01, 2008
- Language: English
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3.9(992 ratings)
3.9(992 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.98 USDAfter rewriting history with their discovery of a Nazi U-boat off the coast of New Jersey, legendary divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler decided to investigate the great enduring mystery of history’s most notorious shipwreck: Why didAfter rewriting history with their discovery of a Nazi U-boat off the coast of New Jersey, legendary divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler decided to investigate the great enduring mystery of history’s most notorious shipwreck: Why did Titanic sink as quickly as it did?... Read moreTo answer the question, Chatterton and Kohler assemble a team of experts to explore Titanic, study its engineering, and dive to the wreck of its sister ship, Brittanic, where Titanic’s last secrets may be revealed.
Titanic’s Last Secrets is a rollercoaster ride through the shipbuilding history, the transatlantic luxury liner business, and shipwreck forensics. Chatterton and Kohler weave their way through a labyrinth of clues to discover that Titanic was not the strong, heroic ship the world thought she was and that the men who built her covered up her flaws when disaster struck. If Titanic had remained afloat for just two hours longer than she did, more than two thousand people would have lived instead of died, and the myth of the great ship would be one of rescue instead of tragedy.
Titanic’s Last Secrets is the never-before-told story of the Ship of Dreams, a contemporary adventure that solves a historical mystery.
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Journeys of the Great Explorers
- By: Glyndwr Williams
- Narrator: Glyndwr Williams
- Length: 7 hours 18 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: October 03, 2008
- Language: English
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3.79(71 ratings)
3.79(71 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDOne of the most dramatic periods in world history is the age of Europe’s discovery of the world from Columbus and da Gama in the late fifteenth century to the voyages of James Cook in the eighteenth century. The extent of the changes can beOne of the most dramatic periods in world history is the age of Europe’s discovery of the world from Columbus and da Gama in the late fifteenth century to the voyages of James Cook in the eighteenth century. The extent of the changes can be seen by comparing the pre-Columbian maps, which showed no knowledge of either the Americas or the Pacific, with those of 1800, which in terms of projection, scale, and content approximate today’s maps. In this course, the most important discovery voyages, the individual characteristics of their commanders, and the endurance of their crews will be described. Interspersed with accounts of individual voyages will be lectures that explain the more general and technical aspects of the voyages: improvements in ship design and navigation, constraints of wind and current, living conditions on board ship, and problems of health and discipline. Special attention will be paid to the controversies that developed from some of these voyages. By the end of the course, we will come to understand some of the reasons men went to sea, the perils they faced, and the successes achieved and failures experienced.
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Born to Be Hanged
- By: Keith Thomson
- Narrator: Feodor Chin
- Length: 9 hours 42 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 10, 2022
- Language: English
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3.79(628 ratings)
3.79(628 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDDiscover the “fascinating and outrageously readable” account of the roguish acts of the first pirates to raid the Pacific in a crusade that ended in a sensational trial back in England–perfect for readers of Nathaniel Philbrick andDiscover the “fascinating and outrageously readable” account of the roguish acts of the first pirates to raid the Pacific in a crusade that ended in a sensational trial back in England–perfect for readers of Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough (Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God )
The year is 1680, in the heart of the Golden Age of Piracy, and more than three hundred daring, hardened pirates–a potent mix of low-life scallywags and a rare breed of gentlemen buccaneers–gather on a remote Caribbean island. The plan: to wreak havoc on the Pacific coastline, raiding cities, mines, and merchant ships. The booty: the bright gleam of Spanish gold and the chance to become legends. So begins one of the greatest piratical adventures of the era–a story not given its full due until now.
Inspired by the intrepid forays of pirate turned Jamaican governor Captain Henry Morgan–yes, that Captain Morgan–the company crosses Panama on foot, slashing its way through the Darien Isthmus, one of the thickest jungles on the planet, and liberating a native princess along the way. After reaching the South Sea, the buccaneers, primarily Englishmen, plunder the Spanish Main in a series of historic assaults, often prevailing against staggering odds and superior firepower. A collective shudder racks the western coastline of South America as the English pirates, waging a kind of proxy war against the Spaniards, gleefully undertake a brief reign over Pacific waters, marauding up and down the continent.
With novelistic prose and a rip-roaring sense of adventure, Keith Thomson guides us through the pirates’ legendary two-year odyssey. We witness the buccaneers evading Indigenous tribes, Spanish conquistadors, and sometimes even their own English countrymen, all with the ever-present threat of the gallows for anyone captured. By fusing contemporaneous accounts with intensive research and previously unknown primary sources, Born to Be Hanged offers a rollicking account of one of the most astonishing pirate expeditions of all time. ... Read more -
The Year 1000
- By: Valerie Hansen
- Narrator: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 8 hours 58 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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3.67(980 ratings)
3.67(980 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USD*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice* From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a “vivid” and “astonishingly comprehensive account [that] casts world history in a brilliant new light” (Publishers Weekly,*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice*
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From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a “vivid” and “astonishingly comprehensive account [that] casts world history in a brilliant new light” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and shows how bold explorations and daring trade missions first connected all of the world’s societies at the end of the first millennium.
People often believe that the years immediately prior to AD 1000 were, with just a few exceptions, lacking in any major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that the Europeans hadn’t yet reached North America, and that the farthest feat of sea travel was the Vikings’ invasion of Britain. But how, then, to explain the presence of blond-haired people in Maya temple murals at Chichen Itza, Mexico? Could it be possible that the Vikings had found their way to the Americas during the height of the Maya empire?
Valerie Hansen, an award-winning historian, argues that the year 1000 was the world’s first point of major cultural exchange and exploration. Drawing on nearly thirty years of research, she presents a compelling account of first encounters between disparate societies, which sparked conflict and collaboration eerily reminiscent of our contemporary moment.
For readers of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, The Year 1000 is a “fascinating…highly impressive, deeply researched, lively and imaginative work” (The New York Times Book Review) that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about how the modern world came to be. -
Meet Me in Atlantis
- By: Mark Adams
- Narrator: Mark Adams
- Length: 10 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: March 10, 2015
- Language: English
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3.65(1251 ratings)
3.65(1251 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDThe New York Times bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu sets out to uncover the truth behind the legendary lost city of Atlantis. A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of AtlantisThe New York Times bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu sets out to uncover the truth behind the legendary lost city of Atlantis. A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Then he made a second, stranger discovery: Amateur explorers are still actively searching for this sunken city all around the world, based entirely on the clues Plato left behind. Exposed to the Atlantis obsession, Adams decides to track down these people and determine why they believe it’s possible to find the world’s most famous lost city and whether any of their theories could prove or disprove its existence. He visits scientists who use cutting-edge technology to find legendary civilizations once thought to be fictional. He examines the numerical and musical codes hidden in Plato’s writings, and with the help of some charismatic sleuths traces their roots back to Pythagoras, the sixth-century BC mathematician. He learns how ancient societies transmitted accounts of cataclysmic events-and how one might dig out the “kernel of truth” in Plato’s original tale. Meet Me in Atlantis is Adams’s enthralling account of his quest to solve one of history’s greatest mysteries; a travelogue that takes readers to fascinating locations to meet irresistible characters; and a deep, often humorous look at the human longing to rediscover a lost world.
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Voyagers
- By: Nicholas Thomas
- Narrator: Mark Robertson
- Length: 3 hours 52 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: June 15, 2021
- Language: English
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3.57(196 ratings)
3.57(196 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0018.99 USDAn award-winning scholar explores the sixty-thousand-year history of the Pacific islands in this dazzling, deeply researched account.One of the Best Books of 2021 — Wall Street JournalThe islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretchAn award-winning scholar explores the sixty-thousand-year history of the Pacific islands in this dazzling, deeply researched account.
One of the Best Books of 2021 — Wall Street Journal
The islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia stretch across a huge expanse of ocean and encompass a multitude of different peoples. Starting with Captain James Cook, the earliest European explorers to visit the Pacific were astounded and perplexed to find populations thriving thousands of miles from continents. Who were these people? From where did they come? And how were they able to reach islands dispersed over such vast tracts of ocean? -
The Kingdom of Speech
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrator: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 4 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: August 30, 2016
- Language: English
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3.55(1434 ratings)
3.55(1434 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDThe maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespreadThe maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.... Read moreTom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech — not evolution — is responsible for humanity’s complex societies and achievements.
From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hard-wired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zig-zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and finds it irrelevant here in the Kingdom of Speech.
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Paris to the Pyrenees
- By: David Downie
- Narrator: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 11 hours 55 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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3.21(447 ratings)
3.21(447 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.95 USDDriven by curiosity, wanderlust, and health crises, David Downie and his wife set out from Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees. Starting on the Rue Saint-Jacques then trekking 750 miles south to Roncesvalles, Spain, their eccentric routeDriven by curiosity, wanderlust, and health crises, David Downie and his wife set out from Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees. Starting on the Rue Saint-Jacques then trekking 750 miles south to Roncesvalles, Spain, their eccentric route takes 72 days on Roman roads and pilgrimage paths–an 1,100-year-old network of trails leading to the sanctuary of Saint James the Greater. It is best known as El Camino de Santiago de Compostela–“The Way” for short. The object of any pilgrimage is an inward journey manifested in a long, reflective walk. For Downie, the inward journey met the outer one: a combination of self-discovery and physical regeneration. More than 200,000 pilgrims take the highly commercialized Spanish route annually, but few cross France. Downie had a goal: to go from Paris to the Pyrenees on age-old trails, making the pilgrimage in his own maverick way.
... Read more
Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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