Physical Geography

When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming....

The Gilded Age is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era that followed the Civil War....

To many of us, the Earth's crust is a relic of ancient, unknowable history. But to a geologist, stones are richly illustrated narratives, telling gothic tales of cataclysm and reincarnation....

The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo Read by Walter Covell. Take a fascinating journey through strange and exotic countries...

Charles Hapgood's classic 1966 book on ancient maps is back. Hapgood produces concrete evidence of an advanced worldwide civilization existing many thousands of years before ancient Egypt.

Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place....

In August 1914, renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration....

Savage Arena is both moving and exciting, an inspirational tale of the adventuring spirit which follows its own path, endlessly seeking new challenges, climbs and difficulties to overcome. It is not reaching the summit which counts, it is the journey to it....

Captain Guyan March had spent his entire professional career aboard Windjammer Barefoot Cruises’ fleet of extravagant tall ships that carry passengers on weeklong fantasy cruises spiced with rum and sun....

The great unknown of the Southwest is conquered by a one-armed man and his crew of adventurers, placing the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon on the map of the American continent....

From bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes a treasure trove of answers to questions about our world.

When the writer Donovan Hohn heard of the mysterious loss of thousands of bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers, and read up on Arctic science and geography.....

In recent years our world has seen transformations of all kinds....

In the summer of 2012, a team of six climbers set out to attempt the first ascent of one of the great unclimbed lines of the Himalaya - the giant Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth highest mountain....

Sagely argued and beautifully written, Measuring America offers readers nothing less than the opportunity to see America's history, and our democracy, in a brilliant new light....

Amid the chaos of the French Revolution, two astronomers set out in opposite directions from Paris to measure the world...

How is it that we can walk unfamiliar streets while maintaining a sense of direction? How can we come up with shortcuts on the fly, in places we've never traveled? The answer is the complex mental map in our brains. This feature of our cognition is easily taken for granted....

In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the timeless yet underappreciated relationship between rivers and civilization as we know it....

In this Very Short Introduction, Warwick Vincent outlines the essential features of lake environments and their biology, offering an up-to-date view of lake ecosystems. Vincent traces the origins of lake science (limnology) from the seminal work of Francois Forel to modern approaches....

In January 1910, the Alaska Steamship Company's Farallon struck Black Reef in Cook Inlet. In a daring attempt to find help, six men launched a lifeboat on the open sea....

On a July 1977 day, having become the first climbers to reach the summit of the Ogre, Doug Scott and Chris Bonington began their long descent. In the minutes that followed, any feeling of success from their achievement would be overwhelmed by the start of a desperate fight for survival....

People of the World becomes a fascinating round-the-world tour of customs and traditions, as well as a go-to source for background information to round out one's own family history....

Here are the most remarkable stories imaginable of maroons, castaways, and other survivors....

Gerald of Wales, also called Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald De Barri ( c. 1146-c. 1223), was the archdeacon of Brecknock and a historian whose accounts of late 12th century Britain and France contain vivid anecdotes about the Christian church....

This is the original audiobook that spawned a thousand theories and is still heating up the blogosphere today. A must-have for out-of-the-box thinkers....