by Jean Malaurie (2006)
"More than simple knolls, the jutting ice that emerges over time is a metaphor for the process of memory and recollection for Malaurie and in the collective memory of the Inuit. Hummocks is the first English translation of the renowned anthropologist's memoir of his expeditions to the Canadian Arctic, and a detailed evocation of Malaurie's travels among the Inuit. Haunted by the North and its people, Malaurie is the modern heir to a storied tradition of Northern exploration, and Hummocks is a dialogue with the great European explorers of the North - Amundsen, Sir John Franklin, Ross, and Rasmussen."--Jacket.
Felicity Aston
"Could you ski to the South Pole? That was the question that British adventurer felicity Aston put to women from around the Commonwealth, as she set out to create the most international all-female expedition ever to the Pole. The team would not be experienced explorers but 'ordinary' women who wanted to inspire others to follow their dreams or make a change for the better in their lives." -- Page 4 of cover.
Lynne Cox
A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen's career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners). Twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles. The author, an adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica, gives us in this new work a full-scale account of Amundsen's life and expeditions. We see Amundsen, in 1903-06, the first to travel the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in his small ship Gjoa, a seventy-foot refitted former herring boat powered by sails and a thirteen-horsepower engine, making his way through the entire length of the treacherous ice bound route, between the northern Canadian mainland and Canada's Arctic islands, from Greenland across Baffin Bay, between the Canadian islands, across the top of Alaska into the Bering Strait. The dangerous journey took three years to complete, as Amundsen, his crew, and six sled dogs waited while the frozen sea around them thawed sufficiently to allow for navigation. We see him journey toward the North Pole in Fridtjof Nansen's famous Fram, until word reached his expedition party of Robert Peary's successful arrival at the North Pole. Amundsen then set out on a secret expedition to the Antarctic, and we follow him through his heroic capture of the South Pole. The author makes clear why Amundsen succeeded in his quests where other adventurer-explorers failed, and how his methodical preparation and willingness to take calculated risks revealed both the spirit of the man and the way to complete one triumphant journey after another. She also describes reading about Amundsen as a young girl and how his exploits inspired her to follow her dreams. We see how she unwittingly set out in Amundsen's path, swimming in open waters off Antarctica, then Greenland (always without a wetsuit), first as a challenge to her own abilities and then later as a way to understand Amundsen's life and the lessons learned from his vision, imagination, and daring.
Ross McSwain
Tales From out Yonder is a mixture of stories about people, places, and things-from frontiersman-rancher-fugitive Humpy Jackson, who drove Col. Randald Mackenzie and his 4th Cavalry soldiers crazy; to the Earl of Aylesford, an English nobleman who settled in Big Spring, bought a ranch and businesses, then drank himself to death; to Pancho Villa's war for the movie cameras; to Mason County's "Hoodoo" War. Read about aviation, outlaws, rainmakers, ghost towns, painted rocks, barbed wire, Nazi prisoners, Buffalo Soldiers, cedar choppers, madstones, gold, salt, onions, and more.
John Hamilton
Joins the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the spring of 1804 as they set out to explore the Louisiana Purchase. Includes highlights and directions to historical points of interest.