Dead Reckoning: Great Adventure Writing from the Golden Age of Exploration, 1800-1900 (Outside Books)

Rating:
Summary: perhaps the best collection of adventure writing
Review: The author does an excellent job of culling not only the most interesting and exciting pieces of 19th century travel writing, but editing out the dull parts so that every line draws you in. To make the book even more readable, she writes helpful short introductions which set the scene and explain the context of each adventurer along with his/her adventures. Big names like Darwin and Shackleton are represented along with many lesser known writers who were equally captivating. I've read many exploration/adventure books in the past few years, but as far as a great collection, I've come across no more exciting reading than this one. From Polar to equatorial to nautical, every time of extreme adventure is represented and the incredible leadership of many of the explorers shines through. Even more noteworthy is the obervational detail the authors provide as naturalists and observers of the world around them, largely unexplored during much of that time period. A great read!

Rating:
Summary: perhaps the best collection of adventure writing
Review: The author does an excellent job of culling not only the most interesting and exciting pieces of 19th century travel writing, but editing out the dull parts so that every line draws you in. To make the book even more readable, she writes helpful short introductions which set the scene and explain the context of each adventurer along with his/her adventures. Big names like Darwin and Shackleton are represented along with many lesser known writers who were equally captivating. I've read many exploration/adventure books in the past few years, but as far as a great collection, I've come across no more exciting reading than this one. From Polar to equatorial to nautical, every time of extreme adventure is represented and the incredible leadership of many of the explorers shines through. Even more noteworthy is the obervational detail the authors provide as naturalists and observers of the world around them, largely unexplored during much of that time period. A great read!

Rating:
Summary: THE ALLURE OF THE UNEXPLORED
Review: This is an enthralling book, filled with personal, very human stories about some of the most extraordinary expeditions ever ventured.

Remember those old maps that show sea monsters lurking at the rims of certain large, anonymous land masses? They represented the complete unknown, the places no human being had ever ventured into. However, those were the very places that incited wonder and curiosity in imaginations of nineteenth century explorers.

The decision to journey into these lands was a commitment to step into uncertainty of the most extreme kind. Just organizing a journey into an unknown land was a tremendous undertaking, requiring great sums of money, generous and sympathetic supporters, supplies that the crew could only estimate, and a great deal of patience and determination. To launch a journey of exploration was to set off knowing that there was a very good possibility that one would never return. Climate, local inhabitants, wildlife, supplies and the disposition of one's traveling companions were factors that could determine the success or failure of an expedition. But the allure of the unknown was so strong that these determined men and women could never ignore it.

DEAD RECKONING, edited by Helen Whybrow, is an adventure story unto itself. It gathers into one volume the most exciting, most challenging and most dramatic episodes from the most intrepid explorers of the Age of Discovery. Here is Mary Mummery, one of the first women explorers, making her way up slippery ice slopes in the Alps. Here is Alfred Russell Wallace clambering around in thick foliage in the South Sea Islands in an effort to spot new birds as he formulates a theory of evolution that will be eclipsed by Darwin's. Here is Mark Twain "vagabondizing" in the American West and looking at everything with his contagious sense of humor.

These men and women journeyed without the benefit of Gore-Tex or cell phones, down sleeping bags or OFF! insect repellant. They endured endured long voyages on leaking ships, frostbite and insect bites, hunger and thirst, indifference or hostility or envy. Many of them traveled arroganly, with the belief that no land truly existed until it had been visited by an educated white man. All of them, however, expderienced an inner journey that was as profound as their outer journey. All of them were dreamers and visionaries, and all of them were changed forever by the journeys they took.

This book makes you wish that there were more lands to be explored, more wild climates to be endured, and that you yourself could be the one to visit them. Since that it impossible, you can dive into this book and get lost without any of the physical or emotional discomforts these daring adventurerers had to survive.