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Catherine: The Portrait of an Empress
Par Gina Kaus. 2018
THERE have been better women than Catherine of Russia, nobler and more learned women, but history discloses no woman who…
combined so much of good and evil into one bewildering and gloriously successful career. Daughter of a petty German Prince, chance made her the wife of the heir to the Russian Empire. She took that nation to her heart, discarded her weakling husband, and ruled her adopted country for more than three decades with a strength and understanding it had seldom known before.No one rejoiced at the birth of Catherine. Her parents had prayed for a boy, and the little girl was soon made to feel the bitterness of their disappointment. She decided, therefore, to become a man and, when the opportunity appeared, she decide to become the greatest man in Europe. Nothing stood in the way of that determination—Catherine was quite prepared to commit murder when the occasion called for it—but she was not cruel according to the standards of her day. She was kind, open-handed; her sympathetic interest in her people was deep; and she became noted for her acts of spontaneous generosity.Gina Kaus seizes the material which this unique life affords, remolds it in the light of newly discovered documents and modern psychology, and presents for the first time a unified and congruous portrait of Catherine. The spectacular occurrences of the Empress’s reign appear here in their relative significance to her life and to European history. Catherine fulfilled the dream of her girlhood and, as Frau Kaus remarks, she died the happiest death that ever Tsar died—she died of laughter.Christ in Russia: The History, Tradition, and Life of the Russian Church
Par Helene Iswolsky. 2018
“Is all of Russia not in her church?” asked the great essayist, Rosanov. The question is likely to surprise many…
American Christians tempted, in spite of themselves, to believe a purely political propaganda. Russia—The Enemy—is both the historical Christian reality and the present hope.In a book of profound contemporary significance, the author has presented both a scholarly and moving history of the Church of Christ in Russia, from its beginnings to the present day, and a deeply sympathetic description of the Russian Church’s Tradition and Life.The author is herself a Russian, a scholar, and a convert from the Orthodox Church in which she was raised. She writes with simplicity and with loving familiarity of things she has not only studied but lived with her heart.This Much Country
Par Kristin Knight Pace. 2019
A memoir of heartbreak, thousand-mile races, the endless Alaskan wilderness and many, many dogs from one of only a handful…
of women to have completed both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod.In 2009, after a crippling divorce that left her heartbroken and directionless, Kristin decided to accept an offer to live at a friend's cabin outside of Denali National Park in Alaska for a few months. In exchange for housing, she would take care of her friend's eight sled dogs. That winter, she learned that she was tougher than she ever knew. She learned how to survive in one of the most remote places on earth and she learned she was strong enough to be alone. She fell in love twice: first with running sled dogs, and then with Andy, a gentle man who had himself moved to Alaska to heal a broken heart. Kristin and Andy married and started a sled dog kennel. While this work was enormously satisfying, Kristin became determined to complete the Iditarod -- the 1,000-mile dogsled race from Anchorage, in south central Alaska, to Nome on the western Bering Sea coast.THIS MUCH COUNTRY is the story of renewal and transformation. It's about journeying across a wild and unpredictable landscape and finding inner peace, courage and a true home. It's about pushing boundaries and overcoming paralyzing fears.Captain William Hilton and the Founding of Hilton Head Island
Par Dwayne W. Pickett. 2019
Behind the pristine beaches and world renown of Hilton Head Island lies a history that dates back to the early…
exploration of the nation. In 1663, William Hilton, a mariner born in England, was hired by a group in Barbados to find new lands for them to settle. Hilton led an exploration of the Port Royal Sound area, where he named a high bluff of land Hiltons Head as a navigational marker for future sailors. The island began as a sparsely populated area on the fringe of English settlement in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when it was called Trench's Island on some maps. Author Dwayne W. Pickett details the life of Hilton, his exploration of the Carolina coast and the founding of an iconic island.Drawn to the Deep: The Remarkable Underwater Explorations of Wes Skiles
Par Julie Hauserman. 2018
Dan's Cave looks like the entrance to the underworld. Two divers swim along a luminous blue-green passage, flashlights cutting through…
the water, a dark mass of stalactites suspended overhead. This is the breathtaking National Geographic cover photo taken by Wes Skiles (1958–2010), a top nature photographer who died in a diving accident before the issue was published. Drawn to the Deep celebrates the life of an extraordinary adventurer who braved extreme danger to share the hidden beauty and environmental truths of the planet with others. Skiles felt a pull to the water as a child, captivated by the cobalt springs of Florida. His passion for diving and his innovative camera techniques earned him assignments with National Geographic and Outside. He also took part in creating over a hundred films, many of which won international awards and acclaim. Skiles was a self-taught expert on Florida's freshwater springs and an outspoken advocate for their conservation. He went head to head with scientists and government officials who dismissed his firsthand observations of water movement through the "Swiss-cheese" karst rock of the underground aquifer. But he never gave up on his quest to disprove the prevailing scientific models or to protest what they allowed—the unchecked pumping and depletion of Florida's groundwater. Through interviews with Skiles's friends and family, along with insights from his own journals, Julie Hauserman describes the escapades and achievements that characterized his life's work. This book is the inspiring story of an explorer and activist who uncovered environmental abuses, advanced the field of underwater photography, and astonished the world with unprecedented views of the secret depths of the planet.A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a…
dramatic harbinger of climate change“Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed. In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years. Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns. Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu
Par Laurence Bergreen. 2007
Between 1271 and 1275, Marco Polo, gentleman and merchant of Venice, accompanied his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo on a…
journey east from Acre, Israel, into central Asia along the Silk Route, eventually reaching China and the court of the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan. Entering the service of the Khan, he travelled extensively in the Mongol Empire. The three Venetians returned home by sea in 1292-5, calling at Sumatra and southern India before reaching Persia and making the last part of their journey to Venice overland.Reef Life: An Underwater Memoir
Par Callum Roberts. 2019
A hugely affecting memoir by the world's leading coral reef scientist, revealing the thrill of diving and the vital science…
and story of these majestic reefs. How did one of the world’s preeminent marine conservation scientists fall in love with coral reefs? We first meet Callum as a young student who had never been abroad, spending a summer helping to map the unknown reefs of Saudi Arabia. From that moment, when Callum first cleared his goggles, he never looked back. He went on to survey Sharm al-Sheikh, and from there he would dive into the deep in the name of research all over the world, from Australia’s imperiled Great Barrier Reef to the hardier reefs of the Caribbean. Reef Life is filled with astonishing stories of adventure and the natural world, which are by turns lyrical and laced with a wonderful wry humor. Callum illuminates the science of our oceans and reefs and his book, combined with the stunning photographs from Alex Mustard, will also commit readers to support Callum’s goal to preserve 10 percent of the world’s oceans.Antarctica's Lost Aviator: The Epic Adventure To Explore The Last Frontier On Earth
Par Jeff Maynard. 2019
The astonishing voyage of the first solo crossing of Antarctica by the unlikeliest of arctic explorers. By the 1930s, no…
one had yet crossed Antarctica, and its vast interior remained a mystery frozen in time. Hoping to write his name in the history books, wealthy American Lincoln Ellsworth announced he would fly across the unexplored continent. And to honor his hero, Wyatt Earp, he would carry his gun belt on the flight. The main obstacles to Ellsworth’s ambition were numerous: he didn’t like the cold, he avoided physical work, and he couldn’t navigate. Consequently, he hired the experienced Australian explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, to organize the expedition on his behalf. While Ellsworth battled depression and struggled to conceal his homosexuality, Wilkins purchased a ship, hired a crew, and ordered a revolutionary new airplane constructed. The Ellsworth Trans-Antarctic Expeditions became epics of misadventure, as competitors plotted to beat Ellsworth, pilots refused to fly, crews mutinied, and the ship was repeatedly trapped in the ice. Finally, in 1935, Ellsworth took off to fly from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. A few hours after leaving, radio contact with him was lost and the world gave him up for dead. Antarctica’s Lost Aviator brings alive one of the strangest episodes in polar history, using previously unpublished diaries, correspondence, photographs, and film to reveal the amazing true story of the first crossing of Antarctica and how, against all odds, it was achieved by the unlikeliest of heroes.Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight
Par Amy Teitel. 2020
Spaceflight historian Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first…
American woman in space. When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century-man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War, was the first woman to break the sound barrier, ran her own luxury cosmetics company, and counted multiple presidents among her personal friends. She was more qualified than any woman in the world to make the leap from atmosphere to orbit. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, twenty-five years Jackie's junior and a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession. While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality-an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress. This dual biography of audacious trailblazers Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb presents these fascinating and fearless women in all their glory and grit, using their stories as guides through the shifting social, political, and technical landscape of the time.Things I Learned From Falling: The must-read true story of 2020
Par Claire Nelson. 2019
An inspirational and gripping first-person account of determination, adversity and survival against the odds.'Uplifitng and brave' - StylistThe must-read true…
story of 2020.In 2018, Claire Nelson made international headlines. She was in her thirties and was beginning to burn out - her hectic London life of work and social activity and striving to do more and do better in the big city was frenetic and stressful. Although she was surrounded by people all of the time, she felt increasingly lonely.When the anxiety she felt finally brought her to breaking point, Claire decided to take some time off and travelled to Joshua Tree Park in California to hike and clear her head. What happened next was something she could never have anticipated.While hiking, Claire fell 25 feet, gravely injuring herself and she lay alone in the desert - mistakenly miles off any trail, without a cell phone signal, fighting for her life. She lay in the elements for four days until she was miraculously found - her rescuers had not expected to find her alive.In THINGS I LEARNED FROM FALLING Claire tells her incredible story and what it taught her about loneliness, anxiety and transformation and how to survive it all.“Let's go!” With that, the boyish, grinning Yuri Gagarin launched into space on April 12, 1961, becoming the first human…
being to exit Earth's orbit. The twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant colonel departed for the stars from within the shadowy world of the Soviet military-industrial complex. Barbed wires, no-entry placards, armed guards, false identities, mendacious maps, and a myriad of secret signs had hidden Gagarin from prying outsiders—not even his friends or family knew what he had been up to. Coming less than four years after the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit, Gagarin's voyage was cause for another round of capitalist shock and Soviet rejoicing. The Cosmonaut Who Couldn't Stop Smiling relates this twentieth-century icon's remarkable life while exploring the fascinating world of Soviet culture. Gagarin's flight brought him massive international fame—in the early 1960s, he was possibly the most photographed person in the world, flashing his trademark smile while rubbing elbows with the varied likes of Nehru, Castro, Queen Elizabeth II, and Italian sex symbol Gina Lollobrigida. Outside of the spotlight, Andrew L. Jenks reveals, his tragic and mysterious death in a jet crash became fodder for morality tales and conspiracy theories in his home country, and, long after his demise, his life continues to provide grist for the Russian popular-culture mill. This is the story of a legend, both the official one and the one of myth, which reflected the fantasies, perversions, hopes and dreams of Gagarin's fellow Russians. With this rich, lively chronicle of Gagarin's life and times, Jenks recreates the elaborately secretive world of space-age Russia while providing insights into Soviet history that will captivate a range of readers.Mind Over Mountain: A Mental and Physical Climb to the Top
Par Robby Kojetin. 2006
Mind Over Mountain is a journey from the seat of a wheelchair to the summit of the highest mountain on…
Earth. A simple mistake at an indoor climbing gym sentenced 28-year-old Robby to a year in a wheelchair, shattering his aspirations of becoming a mountaineer. In the months that followed, Robby faced depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and a complete loss of a sense of his own identity.But from somewhere deep inside him he summoned up the strength to keep going even when all seemed lost, and from there he went on to embark on a journey that would become a remarkable feat of mental and physical strength.This story is more than a biography or an account of a mountaineering expedition – it's a trip into hell and back, an awe-inspiring effort to chase the ultimate dream and rebuild a life worth living for.Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: the Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance
Par Jennifer Armstrong. 1998
Describes the events of the 1914 Shackleton Antarctic expedition when, after being trapped in a frozen sea for nine months,…
their ship, Endurance, was finally crushed, forcing Shackleton and his men to make a very long and perilous journey across ice and stormy seas to reach inhabited land.The Multifarious Mr. Banks: From Botany Bay to Kew, The Natural Historian Who Shaped the World
Par Toby Musgrave. 2020
A fascinating life of Sir Joseph Banks which restores him to his proper place in history as a leading scientific…
figure of the English Enlightenment As official botanist on James Cook's first circumnavigation, the longest-serving president of the Royal Society, advisor to King George III, the "father of Australia," and the man who established Kew as the world's leading botanical garden, Sir Joseph Banks was integral to the English Enlightenment. Yet he has not received the recognition that his multifarious achievements deserve. In this engaging account, Toby Musgrave reveals the true extent of Banks’s contributions to science and Britain. From an early age Banks pursued his passion for natural history through study and extensive travel, most famously on the HMS Endeavour. He went on to become a pivotal figure in the advancement of British scientific, economic, and colonial interests. With his enquiring, enterprising mind and extensive network of correspondents, Banks’s reputation and influence were global. Drawing widely on Banks's writings, Musgrave sheds light on Banks’s profound impact on British science and empire in an age of rapid advancement.Delia and Mark Owens in Africa: A Life in the Wild
Par Delia Owens. 2019
Delia Owens, author of the best-selling Where the Crawdads Sing, began her career writing riveting real-life adventure and wildlife tales…
with her husband, Mark Owens. Collected in a single volume for the first time, these three odysseys show how the Owenses&’ &“ingenuity, courage, and accomplishment are beyond exaggeration.&” (People) Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, two young Americans, Delia and Mark Owens, caught a plane to Africa, bought a third-hand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. In this vast wilderness they met animals that had never seen humans before, and leopards, giraffes, and brown hyenas were regular visitors to their camp, all chronicled in Cry of the Kalahari. But the Kalahari is not Eden, and Mark and Delia were continually threatened by wildfires, drought, violent storms, and sometimes by the animals they studied and loved. They set off on another African odyssey in search of a new wilderness in The Eye of the Elephant. They land in a remote valley of Zambia, where the hippos swam in the river just below their tents, lions stalked the bush, and elephants wandered into camp to eat marula fruits. The peace, though, was soon shattered with gunfire, and Delia and Mark were inexorably drawn into a high-stakes struggle to save the wildlife. With Secrets of the Savanna, Delia and Mark tell the dramatic story of their last years in Africa, fighting to save elephants, villagers, and—in the end—themselves. The award-winning zoologists and pioneering conservationists describe their work in the remote and ruggedly beautiful Luangwa Valley, in northeastern Zambia.Αυτός κοιμότανε με τη μαμά
Par G. G. Vega. 2020
Περιγραφή Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι μια σύντομη ιστορία από τις εμπειρίες που είχα παιδί, στα 1968, σε μια απομακρυσμένη περιοχή,…
σε ένα εχθρικό και δύσκολο περιβάλλον, σε ένα μικρό χωριό στις όχθες του ποταμού Παραγουάη, κοντά στα σύνορα με τη Βραζιλία και τη Βολιβία, στη Νότια Αμερική, στο έδαφος της Παραγουάης, όπου γεννήθηκα και πέρασα το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της παιδικής μου ηλικίας. Σκοπός αυτού του βιβλίου είναι να πω πως παρ’ όλες τις δυσκολίες στη χώρα μου, όσο απομακρυσμένος και δύσβατος κι αν ήταν ο τόπος μου, ο Θεός με φρόντισε, με βοήθησε, με έκανε να γίνω άνθρωπος. Αυτό το αποδίδω στην αγάπη και αφοσίωση των γονιών μου, στο σεβασμό που είχαν για την οικογένειά τους, την αγάπη για τα παιδιά τους και την αυθεντική τους, απλή και ταπεινή, αλλά ειλικρινή πίστη στο Θεό.David Livingstone: African Explorer (Sower Ser.sower Series Biographies)
Par John H. Tiner, Diane Davis, Joyce Bohn, Rebecca Booher. 1997
Sons of the Waves: The Common Seaman in the Heroic Age of Sail
Par Stephen Taylor. 2020
A brilliant telling of the history of the common seaman in the age of sail, and his role in Britain&’s…
trade, exploration, and warfare British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words. In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs. Proud and spirited, learned in their own fashion, with robust opinions and the courage to challenge overweening authority, they stand out from their less adventurous compatriots. Taylor demonstrates how the sailor was the engine of British prosperity and expansion up to the Industrial Revolution. From exploring the South Seas with Cook to establishing the East India Company as a global corporation, from the sea battles that made Britain a superpower to the crisis of the 1797 mutinies, these "sons of the waves" held the nation&’s destiny in their calloused hands.John Ledyard’s Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage
Par John Ledyard, Helen M. Gilkey, Robert M. Storm. 2020
To the Pacific Ocean, and in Quest of a North-West Passage, Between Asia and America; Performed in the Years 1776,…
1777, 1778, and 1779Captain John Cook’s last voyage, his third to the Pacific Northwest, was a remarkable one, for his crew included several literate men, scientists, scholars, and specialists. Anticipating a rush into print after the voyage, the British Admiralty ordered all logbooks, journals, diaries, and notes of the crew members confiscated when the fleet returned to England. It has thus been presumed that John Ledyard, the young Yankee sailor, compiled this Journal from memory or from notes which he secretly retained. Aside from its value as an independent account of the Cook voyage, it was the first writing on the Pacific Northwest to be widely distributed in America.