Sir Francis Drake
Kristin Petrie
A biography of the English seaman and explorer who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for helping to make England a world power by circumnavigating the globe and raiding Spanish ships.

by Wade G. Dudley (2003)
"In the fifteenth century, Europe fully emerged from the Dark Ages and sent its explorers to all corners of the globe in search of trade and empire. Inevitably, these new world powers came into conflict with one another over economic, dynastic, and religious issues. In the midst of this upheavel, Francis Drake, motivated as much by his intense hatred of Catholic Spain as by his devotion to plunder and to his Protestant queen, Elizabeth I of England, etched a name for himself in the annals of naval history.". "Drake was born a commoner, but his exploits raiding the Spanish Main elevated him to the nobility and the councils of Queen Elizabeth. In 1588, King Philip II of Spain attempted to return England to the Catholic fold by force of naval arms. The Spanish Armada confidently set sail for what became one the most crushing defeats in history, due in part to the efforts of Sir Francis Drake. Viewed as a hero by the English people, his superiors and rivals often considered him little more than a common pirate. Wade Dudley's penetrating look at this complex man serves as an introduction to Drake's life and provides a concise account of the religious and dynastic disputes that would affect Europe for the next three centuries."--BOOK JACKET.
Kristin Petrie
A biography of the English seaman and explorer who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for helping to make England a world power by circumnavigating the globe and raiding Spanish ships.
Donald S. Johnson
"Henry Hudson's life as we know it is compressed into the four years from 1607 to 1610, when he made four momentous voyages in search of the passage to Asia, journeys that greatly expanded geographical knowledge of the world. And while his beginnings will remain a mystery, we can be quite certain he died shortly after being set adrift in a small boat by a mutinous crew in the frigid waters of the bay that bears his name."--BOOK JACKET. "One of the foremost explorers of the Age of Discovery, Hudson was a captain-for-hire who served both his native England and archrival Holland, making arduous northern passages to the east to Russia and Siberia and to the west to Greenland and beyond."--BOOK JACKET. "In 1609, under the Dutch flag, he explored America's east coast from the Chesapeake to Penobscot Bay, including a push up the Hudson River as far north as Albany.^ His accounts of the land's richness led to the Dutch colonization of America, from which sprang much of our religious, philosophical, and governmental ideals, including the concepts of freedom of religion, separation of Church and State, and a free public school system."--BOOK JACKET. "Yet historians have virtually ignored Henry Hudson, a far cry from the admiration he inspired in no less a contemporary than Captain John Smith, who wrote "...the bounds of America doth stretch many thousand miles: into the frozen partes whereof one Master Hutson did make the greatest discoverie of any Christian I knowe of, where he unfortunately died.""--BOOK JACKET. "Author Donald Johnson became fascinated by this mysterious explorer while sailing his schooner in the high latitudes near Hudson Bay, and later while working on the 1989 replica of Hudson's Half Moon. Frustrated by the lack of biographical material, Johnson set out to uncover what he could of Henry Hudson."--BOOK JACKET.^ "Charting the Sea of Darkness brings into focus the world as Henry Hudson knew it. Using Hudson's original logs, those of his mate, Robert Juet, and a passenger, Abacuck Prickett, Johnson rebuilds the man and his times, bringing new insight to an explorer whose influence on history is far out of proportion to his recorded place in it."--BOOK JACKET.
Samuel Bawlf
"In The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, Samuel Bawlf masterfully recounts the drama of this historic expedition, offering intriguing insight into life at sea in the sixteenth century - from the dangers of mutiny and the lack of knowledge about wind and current to the arduous physical challenges faced every day by Drake's men. But it is Bawlf's asertion of Drake's whereabouts in the summer of 1579 that gives this book even greater originality. From an intensive study of maps of the period, Bawlf shows with certainty that Drake sailed all the way to Alaska - much farther than anyone has heretofore imagined - thereby rewriting the history of exploration in North America. He was, Bawlf claims, in search of the western entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage, at which he planned to found England's first colony, which could wrest control of the Pacific, and the wealth of the East Indies, from Spain. Drake's voyage was so far ahead of its time that another 200 years would pass before the eighteenth-century explorers of record reached the northwest coast of North America."--BOOK JACKET.
Alexandra Fuller
With the same disarmingly unguarded prose that won her critical acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller tells of her unusual friendship with "K"—a white African and veteran of the brutal, racially divided Rhodesian War. An engrossing and haunting tale of love, godliness, hate, war, and survival, Scribbling the Cat recounts the journey she makes with K into the lands that hold the scars of their war, from Zambia through Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and into Mozambique. Driven by memories, they venture deeper into the countries' remote bush, where they encounter other veterans and survivors and confront the demons of K's past: a violent war marked by racial strife, jungle battles, torture, and the murdering of innocent civilians.