Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Adventurers & Explorers

Hundreds of hardy people have tried to carve a living in the Alaskan bush, but few...

It started out as a simple hike in the Utah canyonlands on a warm Saturday afternoon. For Aron Ralston, a twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer and outdoorsman, a walk into the remote Blue John Canyon was a chance to get a break from a winter of solo climbing Colorado's highest and toughest peaks. He'd earned this weekend vacation, and though he met two charming women along the way, by...

Kevin O'Hara's journey of self-discovery begins as a mad lark: who in their right mind would try to circle the entire coastline of Ireland on foot--and with a donkey and cart no less?

But Kevin had promised his homesick Irish mother that he would explore the whole of the Old Country and bring back the sights and the stories to their home in Massachusetts. Determined to reach his grandmother's village by Christmas Eve, Kevin and his stubborn but endearing donkey, Missie, set off on 1800-mile trek along the entire jagged coast of a divided Ireland.

Their rollicking...

In Wild Men, Wild Alaska professional hunting and fishing guide and outfitter Rocky McElveen tells the stories of his own adventures as well as those of some of his well-known clients. The book takes readers directly into the Alaskan bush, and shares the intense challenges of a majestic wilderness that pushes a man to his limits.

Bill Sublette (1799-1845) led two lives. Renowned as a hardy mountain man, he ranged the Missouri, Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Sweetwater River country between 1823 and 1833 hunting beaver, fighting Indians, and unwittingly opening the West for settlers (he proved that wagons could be used effectively on the Oregon Trail). Financial success and silk hats, which strangled the fur trade, later forced him to a less adventuresome life in St. Louis as a gentleman farmer, businessman, and politician.

Not only did Sublette help develop the rendezvous system in the fur trade and blaze the...

Born during the American Revolution, Williams was a child of the early frontier. In his young manhood he became an itinerant preacher and appointed himself a missionary to the Osages, who soon converted him to their lifeway. The Osage girl he married died after bearing his two daughters. From this point on, Old Bill forsook civilization and made the wilderness his home. He was a master trapper and so identified himself in signing his name. He was one of the guides of the Sibley survey of the Santa Fe Trail in 1825 and some twenty years later was a guide with two different Fremont...

As the Quincentennial Celebration of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America approaches, interest in the voyage, and in the questions surrounding it, continues to grow. This definitive edition of Columbus's account of the voyage presents the most accurate printed version of his journal available to date. Unfortunately both Columbus's original manuscript, presented to Ferdinand and Isabella along with other evidence of his discoveries, and a single complete copy have been lost for centuries. The primary surviving record of the voyage-part quotation, part summary of the complete copy-is...

In the history of the American frontier, John Sutter (1803-1880) looms large. A Swiss expatriate who attempted to create a personal empire in California's Sacramento Valley, he founded New Helvetia, a cosmopolitan settlement whose economy depended on Indian slaves and free laborers. New Helvetia drew overland immigrants to California in the 1840s and then--after gold was discovered by Sutter's employees--a flood of fortune seekers. Sutter was poised to become one of the richest men in the West, but rapacious settlers and his own poor business sense sent his dreams crashing.

Albert...

The true history of a legendary American folk hero

In the 1820s, a fellow named Sam Patch grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, working there (when he wasn't drinking) as a mill hand for one of America's new textile companies. Sam made a name for himself one day by jumping seventy feet into the tumultuous waters below Pawtucket Falls. When in 1827 he repeated the stunt in Paterson, New Jersey, another mill town, an even larger audience gathered to cheer on the daredevil they would call the "Jersey Jumper." Inevitably, he went to Niagara Falls, where in 1829 he jumped not once...