History : Exploration & Discovery

With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. more...

Price: $15.95

Captain Scott's own account of his tragic race with Roald Amundsen for the South Pole thrilled the world in 1913. This new edition of his Journals publishes for the first time a complete list of the changes made to Scott's original text before publication. - ;'For God's sake look after our people'. Captain Scott's harrowing account of his expedition to the South Pole in 1910-12 was first published in 1913. In his journals Scott records his party's optimistic departure from New Zealand, the hazardous voyage of theTerra Nova to Antarctica, and the trek with ponies and dogs across the ice to the Pole. On the way the explorers conduct scientific experiments, collect specimens, and get to know each other's characters. Their discovery that Amundsen has beaten them to their goal,. and the endurance with which they face an 850-mile march to safety, have become the stuff of legend. This new edition publishes for the first time a complete list of the changes made to Scott's original text before publication. In his Introduction Max Jones illuminates the Journals' writing and publication, Scott's changing reputation, and the continued attraction of heroes in our cynical age. - ;definitive...Max Jones and the publishers are to be congratulated on this new version of a classic story, and for offering it at such a reasonable price. It should be the last word for a very long time. - Polar Record 42 more...

Price: $8.95

This major contribution to contact period studies points to the Lasley Vore site in modern Oklahoma as the most likely first meeting place of Plains Indians and Europeans more than 300 years ago. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Benard, Sieur de la Harpe, departed St. Malo in Brittany for the New World. La Harpe, a member of the French bourgeoisie, arrived at Dauphin Island on the Gulf coast to take up the entrepreneurial concession provided by the director of the French colony, Jean Baptiste Lemoyne de Bienville. La Harpe's charge was to open a trading post on the Red River just above a Caddoan village not far from present-day Texarkana. Following the establishment of this post, La Harpe ventured farther north to extend his trade market into the region occupied by the Wichita Indians. Here he encountered a Tawakoni village with an estimated 6,000 inhabitants, a number that swelled to 7,000 during the ten-day visit. Despite years of ethnohistoric and archaeological research, no scholar had successfully established where this important meeting took place. Then in 1988, George Odell and his crew surveyed and excavated an area 13 miles south of Tulsa, along the Arkansas River, that revealed undeniable association of Native American habitation refuse with 18th-century European trade goods. Odell here presents a full account of the presumed location of the Tawakoni village as revealed through the analysis of excavated materials from nine specialist collaborators. In a strikingly well written narrative report, employing careful study and innovative analysis supported by appendixes containing the excavation data, Odell combines documentary history and archaeological evidence to pinpoint the probable site of the first European contact with North American Plains Indians. George H. Odell is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. He has also authored Stone Tools: Theoretical Insights into Human Prehistory. more...

Price: $23.96

Selecting the most distinguished American explorers, this book by Samuel Smucker contains narratives of their research and adventures in remote and interesting parts of the globe. Among the five explorers is Elisha Kent Kane: from his youth and early training, oriental wanderings, discoveries and perils. It looks at Kane’s unconquerable enthusiasm while enduring his First and Second Arctic Expeditions and winter life in the arctic regions. It also contains his official report of the Second Grinnell Expedition. Other explorers include John Ledyard, John Charles Fremont, Charles Wilkes, and Matthew C. Perry. more...

Price: $4.95

The Louisiana Purchase by Ripley Hitchcock brings to life the journals of Lewis and Clark on their mission to explore the greatest land purchase in history. In a transaction that doubled the size of the United States, this book investigates not only the physical boundaries but the financial agreements between the United States and Napoleon Bonaparte, and the importance of New Orleans, Florida and the Missouri River in the western expansion of the United States. more...

Price: $4.95