A Traveller's Year

A Traveller's Year

Author:

Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA

Published: 2015-10-01

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 1781012016

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A collection of anecdotes for each day of the year on the subject of travel and exploration from Charles Darwin, Michael Palin, Evelyn Waugh, and others. With an emphasis on the period 1750–1950—the classic era of both European exploration and diary-writing—this anthology features excerpts that convey men and women’s experiences of travel and discovery from the sixteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. The authors of the pieces range from famous explorers such as Captains Cook and Scott to modern travel writers journeying through the contemporary world, from people who pushed back the boundaries of geographical knowledge to people who wrote about what they did on their summer holidays. The book includes an introduction, explanatory notes and mini-biographies of all the contributors, including: Gertrude Bell (woman traveller in the Middle East) James Boswell (travels in Scotland and the Hebrides) William Cobbett (Rural Rides through England) Christopher Columbus (journals of his voyages to America) Charles Darwin (Voyage of the Beagle) Captain James Cook (voyages in the Pacific) Washington Irving (American writer travelled in Europe in first decades of nineteenth century) Edward Lear (landscape painter and nonsense writer produced journals of his travels in Greece, Corsica, Near East etc) Lewis & Clark (journals of famous journey of American exploration) William Morris (wrote a journal of a trip to Iceland in 1870s) Michael Palin (a Python abroad) Mungo Park (African explorer in early nineteenth century) Captain Robert Falcon Scott (doomed journey to South Pole) Evelyn Waugh (diaries of 1930s travels in Mediterranean and beyond) William John Wills (explorer of Australia)


The Adventurer's Handbook

The Adventurer's Handbook

Author: Mick Conefrey

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2010-10-12

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0230113265

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Combining The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and Into Thin Air, award-winning documentarian Mick Conefrey's The Adventurer's Handbook draws lessons from the glory days of exploration. What makes a good explorer? Adaptability, ambition, stamina, self-confidence, curiosity, optimism, authority—and fundraising ability. Though few of us will ever have to face a charging elephant, or survive solely on penguin stew, when it comes to project management, crisis aversion, or any number of everyday problems, there is much we can learn from the larger-than-life tales of the world's most famous adventurers. Here, award-winning documentarian Mick Conefrey pulls practical advice from their original diaries and logs, like how to survive an anaconda attack (wait until it has swallowed your legs, then reach down and cut its head off), and how to keep morale up (according to Ernest Shackleton, "A good laugh doesn't require any additional weight"). In addition to the wonderful characters and stories, this book offers many lessons on how to set sail without a clear path home. Answers to some important questions, courtesy of The Adventurer's Handbook: * How many corpses are believed to be on Mt. Everest? Answer: 120 * How is polar bear meat best prepared? Answer: Raw and frozen. * What do you do if attacked by a charging lion? Answer: Stand very still and stare it down. * What should you wear when crossing a desert? Answer: Lots of layers—fabric absorbs sweat and prolongs its cooling action.


Diary of a Journey to Abyssinia, 1868

Diary of a Journey to Abyssinia, 1868

Author: William Simpson

Publisher: Tsehai Publishers

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9780972317214

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The Expedition to Magdala of 1867-1868 was a memorable event in British Military history of warfare in general, and in the history of Ethiopia. Meticulously planned and executed, the campaign was a triumph for its commander, Sir Robert Napier. It was notable for the use of Elephants imported from India, the building of a port railway and the use of breech-loading rifles, the first time they employed in War.


Blood, Land, and Sex

Blood, Land, and Sex

Author: Lyda Favali

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2003-06-18

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 0253109841

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In Eritrea, state, traditional, and religious laws equally prevail, but any of these legal systems may be put into play depending upon the individual or individuals involved in a legal dispute. Because of conflicting laws, it has been difficult for Eritreans to come to a consensus on what constitutes their legal system. In Blood, Land, and Sex, Lyda Favali and Roy Pateman examine the roles of the state, ethnic groups, religious groups, and the international community in several key areas of Eritrean law -- blood feud or murder, land tenure, gender relations (marriage, prostitution, rape), and female genital surgery. Favali and Pateman explore the intersections of the various laws and discuss how change can be brought to communities where legal ambiguity prevails, often to the grave harm of women and other powerless individuals. This significant book focuses on how Eritrea and other newly emerging democracies might build pluralist legal systems that will be acceptable to an ethnically and religiously diverse population.


Into Thick Air

Into Thick Air

Author: Jim Malusa

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1578051843

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“Delightful debut travelogue by botanist Malusa, who cycled to the lowest point on each of six continents.” —Kirkus Reviews With plenty of sunscreen and a cold beer swaddled in his sleeping bag, writer and botanist Jim Malusa bicycled alone to the lowest point on each of six continents, a six–year series of “anti–expeditions” to “anti–summits.” His journeys took him to Lake Eyre in the arid heart of Australia, along Moses’ route to the Dead Sea, and from Moscow to the Caspian Sea. He pedaled across the Andes to Patagonia, around tiny Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, and from Tucson to Death Valley. With a scientist’s eye, Malusa vividly observes local landscapes and creatures. As a lone man, he is overfed by grandmothers, courted by ladies of the night in Volgograd, invited into a mosque by Africa’s most feared tribe, chased by sandstorms and hurricanes—yet Malusa keeps riding. His reward: the deep silence of the world’s great depressions. A large–hearted narrative of what happens when a friendly, perceptive American puts himself at the mercy of strange landscapes and their denizens, Into Thick Air presents one of the most talented new voices in contemporary travel writing. “I’ve followed all of Jim’s amazing and hilarious journeys, and I am happy to claim him as one of my favorite writers.” —Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times bestselling author “His descriptions of desert landscapes can be extraordinary . . . You can almost feel the dry gusts turning Malusa’s lips into cracked leather.” —The New York Times Book Review


How to Climb Mt. Blanc in a Skirt

How to Climb Mt. Blanc in a Skirt

Author: Mick Conefrey

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2011-03-15

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0230112420

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• Which explorer found the lost site of Jesus' first miracle? • Who was first to the top of the highest mountain in Peru? • Who was the first Westerner to visit the Ottoman harem in Constantinople? • Who held the world record as the only person to fly from Britain to Australia for 44 years? You'll find the answers to these questions and more in Mick Conefrey's charming new book (a hint: none of them had beards). In 1870, New York mountaineer Meta Brevoort climbed Mt. Blanc in a hoop skirt. Pausing at the summit only long enough to drink a glass of champagne and dance the quadrille with her alpine guides, she marched back down the mountain and into history as one of the first female mountain explorers. Here, Mick Conefrey weaves together tips, how-tos, anecdotes, and eccentric lists to tell the amazing stories of history's great female explorers—women who were just as fascinating and inspiring as all the Shackletons, Mallorys, and Livingstones. Most were brave, some were reckless, and all were fascinating. From Fanny Bullock Workman, who was photographed on top of a mountain pass in the Karakoram, holding up a banner calling for "Votes for Women" to Mary Hall, the Victorian world traveler, whose motto was, "take every precaution and abandon all fear," How to Climb Mt. Blanc in a Skirt is uproariously funny and occasionally downright strange.


Literature of Travel and Exploration: A to F

Literature of Travel and Exploration: A to F

Author: Jennifer Speake

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 9781579584252

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Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.