In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, leading an expedition of five ships and over 270 men, set sail from Spain in search of the Spice Islands. Three years later, one ship returned to port with just 18 men. Magellan was not among the survivors, having been killed in the Philippines. But the remainder of his party, quite inadvertently, had been first to circumnavigate the world.
One of the survivors of the voyage was Antonio Pigafetta, a young Italian nobleman and volunteer member of the crew. His diligent and detailed accounting of the expedition is the fullest, most valuable narrative of the...

The Arab equivalent of Marco Polo, Sheikh Ibn Battuta (1304-77) set out as a young man on a pilgrimage to Mecca that ended 27 years and 75,000 miles later.
The only medieval traveler known to have visited the lands of every Muslim ruler of his time, Ibn Battuta was born into a family of highly respected religious judges and educated as a theologian. Leaving his native city of Tangier in 1326, he traveled -- over the next several years -- to East Africa, Byzantium, Iraq, southern Russia, India, Ceylon, and China. His account of the journey, dictated on his return, not only provides vivid...