Sally Carrighar was a prolific writer of stories of the natural world. She has an almost magical ability to bring wild creatures to life with her literary renditions of their world allowing us to get inside that world and live it briefly. In Icebound Summer, we are taken through a brief and intense arctic summer when seemingly frozen and lifeless tundra comes to life. From the arctic fox to the arctic terns overhead, we suddenly realize this is a place of surprisingly abundant life. Icebound Summer is one of the great outdoor classics of wildlife literature.
'An epic tale of exploration, daring and tragedy told by a fine historian - and a wonderful writer' Peter Frankopan, author of the bestselling The Silk Roads. 'The name of William Barents isn’t that familiar to us these days…but this enthralling, elemental and literally spine-chilling epic of courage and endurance should change all that’ Roger Alton, Daily Mail A dramatic and compelling account of survival against the odds from the golden Age of Exploration. Since its beginning, the human story has been one of exploration and survival - often against long odds. The longest odds of all might have been faced by Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew of fifteen, who on Barents’ third journey into the Far Arctic in the year 1597 lost their ship to a crush of icebergs and, with few weapons and dwindling supplies, spent nine months fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing cold and seemingly endless winter. This is their story. In Icebound, Andrea Pitzer combines a movie-worthy tale of survival with a sweeping history of the period - a time of hope, adventure and seemingly unlimited scientific and geographic frontiers. At the story’s centre is William Barents, one of the sixteenth century’s greatest navigators, whose larger-than-life ambitions and obsessive quest to find a path through the deepest, most remote regions of the Arctic ended in both catastrophe and glory - glory because the desperation that his men endured had an epic quality that would echo through the centuries as both warning and spur to polar explorers. In a narrative that is filled with fascinating tutorials - on such topics as survival at twenty degrees below, the degeneration of the human body when it lacks Vitamin C, the history of mutiny, the practice of keel hauling, the art of celestial navigation and the intricacies of repairing masts and building shelters - the lesson that stands above all others is the feats humans are capable of when asked to double then triple then quadruple their physical capacities.
Established in 1911, The Rotarian is the official magazine of Rotary International and is circulated worldwide. Each issue contains feature articles, columns, and departments about, or of interest to, Rotarians. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners and 19 Pulitzer Prize winners – from Mahatma Ghandi to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – have written for the magazine.
Some were feisty and fiery. Others were cool and dangerous. All were incredibly courageous. Outrageous Women of The Middle Ages took on the challenge of their world—and didn't worry about ruffling a few feathers Among the outrageous women you'll meet are: Eleanor of Aquitaine—queen of France and later England, she led a group of women on the Second Crusade and created her own financial system Lady Murasaki Shikibu—besides being a wife and mother, she learned the "forbidden" language of Chinese and wrote the world's first novel Aud the Deep-Minded—a Viking wise woman and explorer who led her clan, grandchildren and all, on a risky voyage from Scotland to Iceland Hildegarde of Bingen—the German nun who, late in life, became a composer, a botanist, and founded convents Damia al-Kahina—a nomadic freedom fighter, skilled at peacemaking and war, who kept her North African homeland free
