A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean
A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean

Author: David Goodrich

Publisher: Pegasus Books

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781643134468

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In the face of widespread misinformation and misunderstanding, a climate scientist ventures into the vast heart of America’s new oil country on just two wheels. Recently recovered from his epic bicycle journey that took him from the Delaware shore to the Oregon coast, distinguished climate scientist David Goodrich sets out on his bike again to traverse the Western Interior Seaway—an ancient ocean that once spread across half of North America. When the waters cleared a geologic age ago, what was left behind was vast, flat prairie, otherworldly rock formations, and oil shale deposits. As Goodrich journeys through the Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Park and across the prairies of the upper Midwest and Canada, we get a raw and ground-level view of where the tar sands and oil reserves are being opened up at an incredible and unprecedented pace. Extraordinary and unregulated, this “black goldrush” is boom and bust in every sense. In a manner reminiscent of John McPhee and Rachel Carson, combined with Goodrich’s wry self-deprecation and scientific expertise, A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean is a galvanizing and adventure-filled read that gets to the heart of drilling on our continent.

Sea Monsters
Sea Monsters

Author: Joseph Nigg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-01-03

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0226925188

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The mythic creature expert and author of Phoenix takes readers through a bestiary of sea monsters featured on the famous 16th century map Carta Marina. In the sixteenth century, sea serpents, giant man-eating lobsters, and other monsters were thought to swim the waters of Norther Europe, threatening seafarers who ventured too far from shore. Thankfully, Scandinavian mariners had Olaus Magnus, who in 1539 charted these fantastic marine animals in his influential map of the Nordic countries, the Carta Marina. In Sea Monsters, mythologist Joseph Nigg brings readers face-to-face with these creatures and other magnificent components of Magnus’s map. Nearly two meters wide in total, the map’s nine wood-block panels comprise the largest and first realistic portrayal of the region. But in addition to its important geographic significance, Magnus’s map goes beyond cartography to scenes both domestic and mystic. Close to shore, Magnus shows humans interacting with common sea life—boats struggling to stay afloat, merchants trading, children swimming, and fisherman pulling lines. But from the offshore deeps rise some of the most terrifying sea creatures imaginable—like sea swine, whales as large as islands, and the Kraken. In this book, Nigg draws on Magnus’s own text to further describe and illuminate these inventive scenes and to flesh out the stories of the monsters. Sea Monsters is a stunning tour of a world that still holds many secrets for us land dwellers, who will forever be fascinated by reports of giant squid and the real-life creatures of the deep that have proven to be as bizarre and otherworldly as we have imagined for centuries. It is a gorgeous guide for enthusiasts of maps, monsters, and the mythic. “[A] beautiful new exploration of the Carta Marina.”—Wired

Across Islands and Oceans
Across Islands and Oceans

Author: James Baldwin

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2012-01-31

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9781470004613

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Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of twenty-five year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging twenty-eight foot sailboat. Early on and "as broke as [he] dared to be," James determined not only to sail around the world, but also to hike across every island that he visits. His inland forays are unique in the literature of circumnavigators as he finds danger, humor, friendship and romance in places most sailors will never visit. James' story unfolds in his earnest exploration of distant lands and seas, his meditations on the people whose lives he touched, and his greater voyage to explore his own private ocean of solitude. His adventure is not merely an attempt to seek thrills, nor even to tempt death, but rather a voyage of discovery as he set out in the direction of his youthful dreams to meet the life he imagined. "Go seek what you will, where you will, but be a seeker all of your life." -James Baldwin

Voyage of the Turtle
Voyage of the Turtle

Author: Carl Safina

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1429900865

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The story of an ancient sea turtle and what its survival says about our future, from the award-winning writer and naturalist Though nature is indifferent to the struggles of her creatures, the human effect on them is often premeditated. The distressing decline of sea turtles in Pacific waters and their surprising recovery in the Atlantic illuminate what can go both wrong and right from our interventions, and teach us the lessons that can be applied to restore health to the world's oceans and its creatures. As Voyage of the Turtle, Carl Safina's compelling natural history adventure makes clear, the fate of the astonishing leatherback turtle, whose ancestry can be traced back 125 million years, is in our hands. Writing with verve and color, Safina describes how he and his colleagues track giant pelagic turtles across the world's oceans and onto remote beaches of every continent. As scientists apply lessons learned in the Atlantic and Caribbean to other endangered seas, Safina follows leatherback migrations, including a thrilling journey from Monterey, California, to nesting grounds on the most remote beaches of Papua, New Guinea. The only surviving species of its genus, family, and suborder, the leatherback is an evolutionary marvel: a "reptile" that behaves like a warm-blooded dinosaur, an ocean animal able to withstand colder water than most fishes and dive deeper than any whale. In his peerless prose, Safina captures the delicate interaction between these gentle giants and the humans who are finally playing a significant role in their survival. "Magnificent . . . A joyful, hopeful book. Safina gives us ample reasons to be enthralled by this astonishing ancient animal—and ample reasons to care." -- The Los Angeles Times

Ancient Ocean Crossings
Ancient Ocean Crossings

Author: Stephen C. Jett

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2017-06-06

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 0817319395

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Paints a compelling picture of impressive pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations that, contrary to many prevailing notions, were not isolated from one another In Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett encourages readers to reevaluate the common belief that there was no significant interchange between the chiefdoms and civilizations of Eurasia and Africa and peoples who occupied the alleged terra incognita beyond the great oceans. More than a hundred centuries separate the time that Ice Age hunters are conventionally thought to have crossed a land bridge from Asia into North America and the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492. Traditional belief has long held that earth’s two hemispheres were essentially cut off from one another as a result of the post-Pleistocene meltwater-fed rising oceans that covered that bridge. The oceans, along with arctic climates and daunting terrestrial distances, formed impermeable barriers to interhemispheric communication. This viewpoint implies that the cultures of the Old World and those of the Americas developed independently. Drawing on abundant and concrete evidence to support his theory for significant pre-Columbian contacts, Jett suggests that many ancient peoples had both the seafaring capabilities and the motives to cross the oceans and, in fact, did so repeatedly and with great impact. His deep and broad work synthesizes information and ideas from archaeology, geography, linguistics, climatology, oceanography, ethnobotany, genetics, medicine, and the history of navigation and seafaring, making an innovative and persuasive multidisciplinary case for a new understanding of human societies and their diffuse but interconnected development.

Swell
Swell

Author: LIZ. CLARK

Publisher: Patagonia

Published: 2024-05-14

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781952338229

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The Voyage of Turtle Rex
The Voyage of Turtle Rex

Author: Kurt Cyrus

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 43

ISBN-13: 054742924X

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Follows the life of a giant prehistoric sea turtle.

Sailing Acts
Sailing Acts

Author: Linford Stutzman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2006-10-01

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 168099266X

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For those who love sailing and you-are-there travel literature. Also for those who enjoy studying the life and times of the Apostle Paul. But definitely for those who love adventure, or at least reading about it! Seafaring isn't for the faint of heart. It wasn't for the Apostle Paul in the first century A.D.—shipwrecked, imprisoned, and often a stranger in foreign lands. And it turned out to be a heart-stopping task some two thousand years later, when a religion professor and his wife undertook a 14-month journey by sailboat! They stopped in eight countries, visiting every site where Paul stopped on his tumultuous missionary journeys. "Sailing Acts" traces this 21st-century voyage from Volos, Greece, to Rome, Italy, by car, by foot, by motorized scooter, but mostly on a 33-foot boat, logging more than 3600 nautical miles over two sailing seasons. "Explorers are easy to admire or despise, but very difficult to understand without going on the trip," writes Stutzman. "To really appreciate the experiences, the drama, and development of Paul the explorer, you need to sail with him." So begins Sailing Acts, inviting readers to come on board. Stutzman draws thoughtful comparisons from his own travel mishaps and adventures to the ones Paul experienced on his journeys. This book is in the tradition of Bruce Feiler's Walking the Bible. Stutzman's knowledge of the socio-political setting in the first-century Roman empire provides an informative backdrop to understanding Paul and reading his epistles in a new light. The book includes dozens of photos, maps showing the couple's travel routes, a list of all the repairs and replacements Stutzman made to the aging boat which he bought sight-unseen, and an itinerary of places they visited. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Early Man and the Ocean
Early Man and the Ocean

Author: Thor Heyerdahl

Publisher: Doubleday Books

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13:

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Discusses the ships, navigational systems, achievements, and discoveries of ancient seamen and examines their influence on the spread of culture in the ancient world and on subsequent exploration.

Heidi Across America
Heidi Across America

Author: Heidi Beierle

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2024-04-30

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0757324983

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A memoir of homecoming – Heidi Across America is a gritty story of how opening our hearts to others enables us to open our hearts to ourselves and love what we find there. In the summer of 2010, Heidi Beierle had just finished her first year of graduate studies in community and regional planning and decided to pedal her bicycle solo from her home on the west coast across rural America to the Preserving the Historic Road conference in Washington, D.C. What started as a research trip turned into an intimately physical and psychological encounter with self and nationhood. Heidi was 35 at the time and didn’t love much about herself except her ability to endure grueling physical undertakings. She viewed her journey as an opportunity to fix her failures and insufficiencies. There were also some research questions she wanted to explore: Why do people live in small towns and what do they like about it? Did a bicyclist like herself bring economic benefit to the small towns she visited? What could communities do to support or invite cyclists to stay in their towns? What could cyclists do to support the communities? Along the way, she was surprised by the kindness of strangers and the emotional pinch of traveling through Wyoming where she grew up. Her journey led her through the Plains and into the Ozarks where the heat climbed to agonizing temperatures and every pedal stroke in the heat felt one closer to death. By the time she completed the trip, Heidi discovered a newfound compassion for herself and a growing love for her country. Strangers opened their hearts to her and in turn, she opened her heart to herself. And her questions began to change and mirror things many Americans are asking themselves today: How can I be okay in my own skin? What does it mean to be enough? How do I satisfy my desire to travel without harming the planet? What does it mean to love America? For many young people, it is a rite of passage to light out on an adventure to see the world and expose themselves to new experiences, but we don’t often talk about how Americans seeing America can open us to the diversity, awe, and wonder available right here in our nation. Heidi Across America offers a journey to self-love, empathy, consideration for others, and respect for the spirit of place as pathways to find connection and home.