History

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. In Snakes with Wings & Gold-digging Ants, Herodotus demonstrates his enormous, omnivorous, sometimes credulous appetite for stories of distant lands and strange creatures. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. In Adventures in the Rocky Mountains, pony-bound Isabella Bird travels the Colorado Territory. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. Mas'udi's matchless The Meadows of Gold has almost miraculously survived: a compendium of stories and information on what he knew of the worlds of the Middle East, the Far East and Europe. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. The Shipwrecked Men tells how a confident, well-equipped Spanish expedition to explore the Florida mainland swiftly turned into disaster. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. In To the Holy Shrines, Sir Richard Burton sets out to become the first Christian to penetrate the Muslim shrines of Medina and Mecca - a reckless stunt. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. In the Heart of the Amazon Forest is Bates' account of his years in the upper reaches of the Amazon - battling great hoards of malevolent reptiles and insects in his quest for ever more obscure specimens. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. The Customs of the Kingdoms of India details Polo's fabulous array of stories from sailors and merchants, about the peoples of the region, some reliable, some wholly implausible, but all fascinating. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. In Piracy, Turtles and Flying Foxes William Dampier demonstrates the adventure writing that inspired both Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. In LIfe on the Golden Horn, Mary Wortley Montagu accounts her adventures in the mysterious, sophisticated culture of Ottoman palaces, bathing places and courts. More...

Great Journeys: allowing readers to travel around the planet and back through the centuries. In Hunt for the Southern Continent, the second of his three great voyages, Cook took on the most frightening of all his challenges - to travel as far south as possible, in the hope of finding a new great continent which could be settled by the British. More...