Selected by "Adventure magazine as the number one adventure book of all time, "The Worst Journey in the World is Apsley Cherry-Garrard' s dramatic, moving, and exceptionally human account of his survival as the youngest member of Robert Falcon Scott' s 1911 expedition to the South Pole. The scion of English landed gentry, Cherry-Garrard was chosen from more than 8,000 volunteers to join the Scott expedition at the height of the craze for polar exploration. When they arrived in Antarctica, " Cherry, " as he was known, was not assigned to the team that would attain the pole, but instead, with two other members, to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. Cherry and his cohorts struggled in near total darkness across more than one hundred miles of ice in temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero, slept in bags heavy with their own frozen sweat, dragged a 700-pound sled over whipping ice that felt like sand against their faces, and wore clothes that were literally frozen stiff. All things considered, his title seems almost charitable. In spite of the sheer suffering and loss, and despite the guilty feelings that he could have done more to save Scott and his crewmembers--a guilt that haunted him until his death--Cherry-Garrard managed to write an account of the ill-fated journey that is infused with his own sweetness and humility. Sometimes funny, often sad, and thoroughly detailed, "The Worst Journey in the World is a triumph of adventure storytelling rightly deserving of its place at the top of the genre.

A thrilling epic of a sea voyage and a complex novel of ideas, The Sea-Wolf is a standard-bearer of its genre. It is the vivid story of a gentleman scholar, Humphrey Van Weyden, who is rescued by a seal-hunting schooner after a ferryboat accident in San Francisco Bay. London uses Van Weyden's ordeal at the hands of a schooner's devious crew to explore powerful themes of ambition, courage, and the innate will to survive. The Sea-Wolf also introduces Jack London's most memorable, fully realized character, Wolf Larsen, the schooner's brutal captain, who ruthlessly crushes anyone standing in his way. As Gary Kinder states in his Introduction, "Wolf Larsen is one of the most carefully carved characters in American literature....London, himself, seems as fascinated as the reader with his own creation."

In this grand and astonishing tale, Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration,” Andrée’s expedition was followed by nearly the entire world, and it made him an international legend.   The Ice Balloon begins in the late nineteenth century, when nations, compelled by vanity, commerce, and science, competed with one another for the greatest discoveries, and newspapers covered every journey. Wilkinson describes how in Andrée several contemporary themes intersected. He was the first modern explorer—the first to depart for the Arctic unencumbered by notions of the Romantic age, and the first to be equipped with the newest technologies. No explorer had ever left with more uncertainty regarding his fate, since none had ever flown over the horizon and into the forbidding region of ice.   In addition to portraying the period, The Ice Balloon gives us a brief history of the exploration of the northern polar regions, both myth and fact, including detailed versions of the two record-setting expeditions just prior to Andrée’s—one led by U.S. Army lieutenant Adolphus Greely from Ellesmere Island; the other by Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who initially sought to reach the pole by embedding his ship in the pack ice and drifting toward it with the current.   Woven throughout is Andrée’s own history, and how he came by his brave and singular idea. We also get to know Andrée’s family, the woman who loves him, and the two men who accompany him—Nils Strindberg, a cousin of the famous playwright, with a tender love affair of his own, and Knut Fraenkel, a willing and hearty young man.   Andrée’s flight and the journey, based on the expedition’s diaries and photographs, dramatically recovered thirty-three years after the balloon came down, along with Wilkinson’s research, provide a book filled with suspense and adventure, a haunting story of high ambition and courage, made tangible with the detail, beauty, and devastating conditions of traveling and dwelling in “the realm of Death,” as one Arctic explorer put it.

Now in paperback, the gripping and inspiring tale of a woman's survival alone in the Arctic.In 1921, four men and one woman ventured deep into the Arctic. Two years later, only one returned.When 23-year-old Inuit Ada Blackjack signed on as a seamstress for a top-secret Arctic expedition, her goal was simple: earn money and find a husband. But her terrifying experiences -- both in the wild and back in civilization -- comprise one of the most amazing untold adventures of the 20th century. Based on a wealth of unpublished materials, including Ada's never-before-seen diaries, bestselling author Jennifer Niven narrates this true story of an unheralded woman who became an unlikely hero.

This very concise, accurate introduction to the basic ideas and practices of contemporary cultural anthropology is designed to address the needs of anthropology professors who make extensive use of ethnographies and other supplementary readings in their courses. Not a standard textbook, Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology functions as a thorough annotated bibliography of the terms and concepts that anthropologists use in their work; its conceptual framework prepares students to read ethnography more effectively, with less misunderstanding.

This third edition of Essentials of Oceanography conveys Garrison's enthusiasm for oceanography to non-science students taking the introductory course. It is a streamlined version of his best-selling Oceanography text, but was created specifically to meet the needs of the shorter course. This text provides students with a basic understanding of the scientific questions, complexities, and uncertainties involved in ocean use and the role and importance of oceans in nurturing and sustaining life on the planet. It further enhances students' natural enthusiasm for the ocean with integrated technology and a stunning visual program. This revision presents the most current scientific information on topics such as global warming as well as an improved and expanded illustration program. In addition, there is an increased emphasis on the interdisciplinary nature of marine science, stressing its connections with astronomy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, geology, biology, ecology, history, and economics. Garrison brings focus and excitement to students' appreciation of the complex nature of the ocean and its interactions with other systems. Tom Garrison recently held student focus groups to discuss their impressions of Essentials of Oceanography and to hear their suggestions for improving the text. Nearly all changes to this new edition stem from student suggestions.

Barry Lopez's National Book Award-winning classic study of the Far North is widely considered his masterpiece.Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world-its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history into a breathtaking study of profound originality is his unique meditation on how the landscape can shape our imagination, desires, and dreams. Its prose as hauntingly pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is nothing less than an indelible classic of modern literature.

In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea-a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provisions that left the crew weak and debilitated by scurvy.For nearly a year and a half, the twenty-five men and one woman aboard the Saint Anna endured terrible hardships and danger as the icebound ship drifted helplessly north. Convinced that the Saint Anna would never free herself from the ice, Albanov and thirteen crewmen left the ship in January 1914, hauling makeshift sledges and kayaks behind them across the frozen sea, hoping to reach the distant coast of Franz Josef Land. With only a shockingly inaccurate map to guide him, Albanov led his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, enduring blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears and walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness, and mutiny. That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his ninety-day ordeal-a story that Jon Krakauer calls an "astounding, utterly compelling book," and David Roberts calls "as lean and taut as a good thriller"-is nearly miraculous.First published in Russia in 1917, Albanov's narrative is here translated into English for the first time. Haunting, suspenseful, and told with gripping detail, In the Land of White Death can now rightfully take its place among the classic writings of Nansen, Scott, Cherry-Garrard, and Shackleton.

The third edition of Evolutionary Psychology continues to be the premier text for the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology, and this major update contains nearly 400 new references.