The high points in the story of Alaska since the American acquisition are brought vividly to life through more than 100 characters, real and fictional.

It was June of 1869 when John Muir reluctantly accepted a job herding sheep from the central valley of California to the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers, high into the Sierra Nevadas and deep into the Yosemite region. He felt ill equipped for the work, and yet the opportunity thrilled his adventurous spirit. With a notebook tied to his belt, he set out for a summer he would never forget. My First Summer in the Sierra is Muir’s classic account of that extraordinary journey.

John Muir, who was born in Scotland and emigrated to America in 1849, was an advocate of U.S. forest conservation and was largely responsible for the establishment of Sequoia and Yosemite national parks in California. Muir has emerged as perhaps the greatest prophet of an era which finds itself suddenly aware of the urgent need to care for our planet.

"Stickeen.... pushed his head past my shoulders, looked down and across, then looked me in the face and began to mutter and whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with words, "Surely, you are not going into that awful place. "As the darkness of a freezing night approaches, an experienced American naturalist and a dog are trapped on an Alaskan Glacier. This is a true story, written by one of the United States' most famous naturalists and explorers.

In this poetic audiobook, hear the words of legendary outdoorsman John Muir's entreaty to the American people imploring them to develop, as he did, a connection to their national parks. An ardent outdoorsman, a gifted writer, a dedicated preservationist, and a spiritual beacon, John Muir worked in his life and in his writing to inspire everyone to find a love for the wilderness and to become invested in its preservation.

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman organized a most unusual summer voyage to the wilds of Alaska: He converted a steamship into a luxury "floating university", populated by some of America's best and brightest scientists and writers, including the anti-capitalist eco-prophet, John Muir. Armed with Dramamine and an industrial-strength mosquito net, Mark Adams sets out to retrace the 1899 expedition. Using the state's intricate public ferry system, the Alaska Marine Highway System, Adams travels 3,000 miles.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River, across the forbidding Rockies, and - by way of the Snake and the Columbia rivers - down to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, endured incredible hardships and witnessed astounding sights. With great perseverance, they worked their way into an unexplored West. When they returned two years later, they had long since been given up for dead.

In Campfire Stories: Close Calls, Steven Rinella invites seasoned hunters, anglers, adventurers, and outdoor professionals to share their tales of perilous adventures in the natural world, from run-ins with black bears and grizzlies to bad falls and severe hypothermia.

A retired law enforcement officer turned pilot and a former math teacher chose to leave their home in Texas for a cabin in the wilderness of Alaska. They left life as they knew it behind to start fresh in the land of the Last Frontier. Their cabin on Cub Lake was only accessible by bush plane in the summer or snow machine during the winter, making life challenging. They knew their learning curve would be steep. What they didn't realize was living on a homestead in the wilderness of Alaska would make them face obstacles they had never experienced before.

Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith.

In Wild Men, Wild Alaska professional hunting and fishing guide and outfitter Rocky McElveen tells the stories of his own adventures as well as those of some of his well-known clients. The book takes listeners directly into the Alaskan bush, and shares the intense challenges of a majestic wilderness that pushes a man to his limits.

In 1937, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight", For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite.... Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter....

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a masterpiece that is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished American in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.

It was June of 1869 when John Muir reluctantly accepted a job herding sheep from the central valley of California to the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers, high into the Sierra Nevadas and deep into the Yosemite region. He felt ill equipped for the work, and yet the opportunity thrilled his adventurous spirit. With a notebook tied to his belt, he set out for a summer he would never forget. My First Summer in the Sierra is Muir’s classic account of that extraordinary journey.

Part of John Muir's appeal to modern audiences is that he not only explored the American West and wrote about its beauties but also fought for their preservation. His successes dot the landscape and are evident in all the natural features that bear his name: forests, lakes, trails, and glaciers. Here collected are some of Muir's finest wilderness essays, ranging in subject matter from Alaska to Yellowstone, from Oregon to the High Sierra.

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness? In his vital, bewitching, inspiring classic, Robert Macfarlane sets out in search of the wildness that remains.

Disappointment River is a dual historical narrative and travel memoir that at once transports listeners back to the heroic age of North American exploration and places them in a still rugged but increasingly fragile Arctic wilderness in the process of profound alteration by the dual forces of energy extraction and climate change.

In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual. Told in Macfarlane’s distinctive voice, The Old Ways folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology, and literature.

I hate every wave of the ocean', the seasick Charles Darwin wrote to his family during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. It was this world-wide journey, however, that launched the scientists career.

In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port - launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe from the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages.

These are the valiant and lyrically descriptive letters, written in 1873, by Isabella Bird, a courageous and spirited Englishwoman, telling her sister of her adventures on horseback over 800 miles of American wilderness.

From the pen of one of the literary world’s finest explorers of the imagination, these classic tales of fantastical habitats and intrepid adventurers delve deep into every mysterious corner of planet Earth. Whether you’ve adventured with Verne before or are only just setting off on your maiden voyage, this collection encompasses the most extraordinary adventures the father of science fiction has to offer.

A fantastic book! Timothy Egan describes his journeys in the Pacific Northwest through visits to salmon fisheries, redwood forests and the manicured English gardens of Vancouver. Here is a blend of history, anthropology and politics.

This is the true story of the real Colonel Fawcett, whose life was the inspiration for the best-selling book The Lost City of Z and an upcoming movie starring Brad Pitt. A thrilling account, it tells of Colonel Fawcett and his mysterious disappearance in the Amazon jungle, which is now considered one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.

When President Thomas Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase - the vast, unknown lands between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico - he promptly established an expedition to map America's new frontier. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark outfitted the "Corps of Discovery," and on May 14, 1804, 45 men in 3 boats set off up the Mississippi.

What does it mean to explore and confront the unknown? Beyond the Trees recounts Adam Shoalts's epic, never-before-attempted solo crossing of Canada's mainland Arctic in a single season. It's also a multilayered story that weaves the narrative of Shoalts's journey into accounts of other adventurers, explorers, First Nations, fur traders, dreamers, eccentrics, and bush pilots to create an unforgettable tale of adventure and exploration.

A former American president nearly dies during an ill-planned exploration through the Brazilian Wilderness and down the River of Doubt. Theodore Roosevelt was a naturalist, explorer, author, hunter, governor, soldier and 26th President of the United States.

This riveting history is a firsthand account of the long and arduous search for one of the greatest explorers of the 19th century. Journalist and adventurer Henry M. Stanley was known for his search for the legendary David Livingstone, and their eventual meeting led to the popular quotation "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" A real-life adventure story, How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa tells of the incredible hardships - disease, hostile natives, tribal warfare, impenetrable jungles, and other obstacles - faced by a daring explorer. This must-have account also includes a wealth of information on various African peoples.

The high points in the story of Alaska since the American acquisition are brought vividly to life through more than 100 characters, real and fictional.

Alaska: A History begins by examining the region’s geography and the Native peoples who inhabited it for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived. The Russians claimed northern North America by right of discovery in 1741. During their occupation of “Russian America”, the region was little more than an outpost for fur hunters and traders. When the czar sold the territory to the United States in 1867, nobody knew what to do with “Seward’s Folly”.

A retired law enforcement officer turned pilot and a former math teacher chose to leave their home in Texas for a cabin in the wilderness of Alaska. They left life as they knew it behind to start fresh in the land of the Last Frontier. Their cabin on Cub Lake was only accessible by bush plane in the summer or snow machine during the winter, making life challenging. They knew their learning curve would be steep. What they didn't realize was living on a homestead in the wilderness of Alaska would make them face obstacles they had never experienced before.

John Muir (1838 -1914) was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness areas in the United States. In the late 1800s, Muir made several trips to the relatively unexplored territory of Alaska. Travels in Alaska, originally published in 1915, describes the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness and its inhabitants as observed during his travels between 1879 and 1890. In poetic prose, he describes the area’s magnificent glaciers and its animals like bears, bald eagles, wolves and whales.

Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.