Book Description

This extraordinary collection offers an unsurpassed chronicle of human endurance, resourcefulness, courage, and luck -- in the most perilous circumstances and against the greatest odds. From the depths of the oceans to the highest mountaintops, on every continent, and even in outer space, here are more than twenty riveting stories by explorers, mountaineers, sailors, pioneers, adventurers, and ordinary people who faced mortal peril...and lived to tell about it.

Fiction cannot rival these true accounts, all of which have been selected for the quality of their writing as well as for their inherent drama. Ranging from the time of the conquistadors to the present day, the pieces are almost all written by eyewitnesses and participants -- including John McCain, who endured agonizing torture in a North Vietnamese POW prison; James Lovell, who commanded Apollo 13 during its harrowing return from an aborted lunar mission; and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who cheated death after crashing his plane in the Libyan desert.

Skillfully edited by John Letterman, whose introductions to each piece provide background and historical context, these memorable stories allow us to experience firsthand the determination and courage of men and women whose lives are on the line. We are transported to Antarctica, where blinding winds and horrific cold torment Ernest Shackleton's men; to the scorching deserts of Arabia, where Wilfred Thesiger is engulfed by sandstorms and punishing heat; to the South Pacific, where the surviving crewmen of the Essex begin an epic 2,000-mile longboat voyage after their ship is rammed and sunk by a whale.
At times inspiring, at times horrifying, and always riveting, this book vividly chronicles the fortitude of a remarkable group of men and women who have written powerfully about the struggle to survive in the face of tremendous adversity. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (3)

Well-Written, But What A Downer
As another reviwer has already stated, this book will not definitively answer the question that so many lovers of Rimbaud ask. To wit, "Why did he stop writing?"-But the book is a well-researched and well-written account of Rimmbaud as "un autre," somebody else than a poet...But it's all so grindingly depressing. Yes, Rimbaud had incredible endurance and will and courage. But he had no business acumen as the accounts of his many endeavors in the world of commerce amply illustrate. The book is essentially a tale of his slow degeneration in body, if not spirit.-I used to have a friend who loved Rimbaud more than I do who would call me in the middle of the night drunkenly, tearfully asking me why he quit. Well, there was nothing I could say at 3 A. M. that he would remember the next morning.-But what I feel is that the answer lies in Rimbaud's most famous poem, "Le Bateau Ivre." At the end of the poem, he says that, after all the exhilarating and mystical insights, after all the rapturous visions amidst the mad seastorms, there is nothing he would like better now then to return to being a litle boat being pushed across a placid pond by a little boy. Rimbaud had been through more hell in his life by the end of his teens than would fit in the lives of many a tortured soul.-It's really not so remarkable when you consider it that, his poetry unrecognized, his soul tortured by the relationship with Verlaine and the other atrocities and privations he endured that the young man would flee the literary world that had given him nothing but anguish in the end.-Unfortunately , the world to which he fled offered little in the way of compensation, as this book sadly chronicles. I recommend this book to those who, like myself, had no clear idea of exactly what Rimbaud DID after he stopped writing besides vague ideas of his being a gun-runner, slave-trader and amputee (This book, by the way, casts serious doubts over whether he was ever either of the former two, except perhaps when forced to do so by bad luck and necessity).-So, all in all, a sad but informative work.-I still think the last lines of "Le Bateau Ivre" are the key to why he stopped writing. But, as is commmonplace, you can't go home again, as those last lines express a yearning for. This book is an excellent chronicle of the alternative Rimbaud was forced to accept.

Odi et Ami
Arthur Rimbaud was one of the most brilliant poets the human race has ever seen. He belongs in the company of Callimachus, Sappho and Catullus, the spoiled child from the north whose frank and erotic poems scandalized Rome: odi et amo, Catullus had written. I hate you and I love you. That says it all. About Rimbaud as well.

Rimbaud was an illusion, a ghost, someone we conjure up and then spend the rest of out lives trying to shake off. Dead for more than a hundred years now, Arthur Rimbaud wrote poetry for a few brief years, while he was still in his teens, from about 1870 to 1873. He could never have imagined the extraordinary influence his slim collection of poems would have over the following century. Rimbaud. however, abandoned the world of literature at a very young age. When he was nineteen, he gave in to a mixture of rage and pride, and threw his marvelous talent onto a bonfire, along with his manuscripts. By the time his anger had eaten its way through his soul, he could not speak of poetry without contempt. He lived another eighteen years, wandering from one end of Europe to the other and as far afield as the East Indies. He joined the Dutch Colonial Army and was sent to Java, but deserted and returned to France. He got work in Cyprus, as an overseer of a stone quarry, but his temper got the better of him, "I have had some quarrels with the workmen," he wrote, "and I've had to request some weapons." He collapsed with typhoid and hurriedly returned home.

In March 1880, when he was twenty-five, he left France for the last time. He found work in Cyprus again, as foreman of a construction gang in the mountains. He got involved in another quarrel and, it seems, threw a stone which hit a local worker and killed him. Rimbaud fled, traveling through the Red Sea, ending up in the British port of Aden, a sun-baked volcanic crater perched at the gateway to the Indian Ocean on the coast of Yemen. He spent the next eleven years in exile, working as a trader in Aden and Abyssinia.

Charles Nicholl's book is chiefly the story of those years, from the time Rimbaud disembarks at Aden in 1880 to his death in Marseilles in 1891, at the age of thirty-seven, from the cancer which had started in his right leg. It is very stylish, thoroughly researched, and shows a great deal of insight into the character of this angry and bitter man. Arthur Rimbaud's adolescent rebellion was so brief and the flowering of his talent so violent and astonishing that it has overshadowed his essential character. His life is often seen through a romantic blur, and the astringent view of his career that Nicholl presents in this book is a useful corrective.

Rimbaud was born in the northern French town of Charleville in October 1854, the son of an army captain and a farmer's daughter. There were two younger sisters and an older brother. The father, who had spent some years in Algeria and in different parts of France, found provincial life stifling and family life difficult. He was often absent. Rimbaud was six when his father left for the last time, never to return.

His mother was a dour, hard-working woman of peasant stock, impatient with her husband's fecklessness, and embittered by his final desertion. For most of his life Rimbaud was like his mother--devoted to hard work. As a child he was obedient, studious and even rather prim. In his final school examinations he swept the board, winning all the prizes in his form except for two.

In his sixteenth year, everything changed. Two catastrophic public events shook France, and a private calamity changed Rimbaud forever. The French emperor Napoleon the Third declared war on Prussia in July 1870. The German armies swept through north-eastern France, the countryside where Rimbaud had grown up, and within six months the French had been defeated.

In the aftermath of the Armistice in January 1871, the people of Paris, republican to the core and disgusted with their government, set up a Commune. Eventually French government troops put it down, killing twenty thousand French men and women in the streets of Paris in a single week in May. Rimbaud had run away from home to join the Commune, though it's unlikely he was there during that week of horror.

Rimbaud though, had his own, personal nightmare to live through. At some time during this visit to Paris he was raped, perhaps gang-raped, probably by a group of soldiers at the Babylone barracks. The evidence is indirect but, as Charles Nicholl says, and most biographers agree with him, it is persuasive. Rimbaud went home to Charleville in a state of profound shock and confusion. He sent batches of his poems to important poets in the capital, Banville and Paul Verlaine among them. Verlaine summoned him to Paris and to his fate. It was September 1871 and Rimbaud was sixteen; Verlaine twenty-eight. The two men--rather, the man and the schoolboy--became lovers. The older poet Banville lent Rimabud an attic flat for a while as a favor to Verlaine. Rimbaud became friends with the musician Ernest Cabaner, who also put him up for a while, the novelist Jules Claretie, and the poets Charles Cros and Germaine Nouveau. These bohemians were scandalizing the bourgeoisie with their sexual indiscretions, their immodest writings and their indulgence in absinthe and hashish and opium. Rimbaud outdid them in every respect.

He made many enemies. Verlaine's future biographer Lepelletier disapproved of his influence on his old friend Verlaine, and Rimbaud responded by calling him an obscenity. When Lepelletier told Rimbaud to shut up, the boy threatened him with a table knife. He called poor Banville yet another obscenity, he stabbed the photographer Carjat with a sword-stick, he repaid the hospitality of Cabaner by going into Cabaner's room when he wasn't there and committing an unspeakable act. In short, Rimbaud was as arrogant and bad-tempered as one could get.

In July 1873, less than two years after they had first met, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in a fit of drunken jealousy. The boy was wounded in the wrist, and Verlaine burst into tears and begged his forgiveness. The next evening while they were out walking in the street Verlaine turned ugly again and pulled the revolver from his pocket. This time Rimbaud called out to a passing policeman. They were in Brussels; the police discovered evidence of their homosexual relationship, and incriminating letters. Rimbaud tried to take back the charges, but it was too late. Verlaine was sentenced to two years' hard labour in a Belgian jail.

Odi et amo. It is a phrase that sums up, not only Rimbaud's work but his life as well.

Prince Arthur becomes a man
I have been influenced by Rimbaud since I was about 15. I learned of him through reading "No One Here Gets Out Alive", the biography of Jim Morrison. That led to Rimbaud which was a huge turning point in my life. It was when I decided to become a poet. The Rimbaud influence retains its lustre two decades later. One thing I always had a hard time dealing with was his renunciation of literature. It always seemed inexplicable to me that someone with that kind of gift could just suddenly turn his back on the muse. It is a dilemma that always conflicted with my reverence for Rimbaud's writing. This is what piqued my curiosity for this book. I immediately placed it on my 'to read' list. I wondered if it could shed some light on this startling decision. I ordered my copy and devoured it once it came in. This book is an enthralling read. It is a fascinating tale of travel and adventure. Rimbaud was certainly living on the edge during these years. His caravans through East Africa are truly the stuff of legend. His ventures from Aden to Harar and Dhibouti et al are amazing. It is interesting to learn how he mastered languages and became like a native. His business savvy is also intriguing. Who would expect the same infidel who spent a season in hell could possess such a degree of business acumen. I was surprised when I learned that he developed an interest in photography during his stay in Africa. It is a shame that he did not get to develop his photography skill before his illness. It reveals that perhaps some interest in the arts still beat in his heart. This interest does suggest that he might have ultimately returned to literature had he not fallen ill and died prematurely. It is tragic that he wasn't able to live longer. This book was an eye opener in a lot of ways. Charles Nicholl did an outstanding job writing this book. I still do not fully understand his renunciation of literature but this book did illuminate many points on his quest for adventure and his desire to become somebody else. This book is a great adventure story and an essential read for anyone who wishes to learn more about Rimbaud. ... Read more

Book Description

Sir James Mann Wordie, born in Glasgow in 1889, was the elder statesman of polar exploration-the link between the heroic Edwardian Age of Shackleton and Scott and the mechanized modern era that opened up Antarctica and the Arctic.The remarkable life of one of Scotland's greatest heroes remains surprisingly little known.This is the first full biography of Wordie to be written. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

three books in one
Fire Into Ice is three books in one, principally it is a stimulating insight into the mind of an exploration geologist/explorer; however, it is also an introduction to anthropology and the stresses and strains of marriage. An excellent read, but you should keep an Atlas close at hand.

Excellent
I live in Chucks hometown and have met him on occassion. Having lived in the artic for many years, and worked in the stock market arena, doing private placements many times, few people know what it has really taken for this man to accomplish what he did especially in the diamond industry. No overnight success many years in the making, hard work ingenious thought. It takes a special person to do it. Call him eccentric if you will, Hats off to him, great read, as adventourous and different as the prospector himself. And NO I am not a friend of his at all, met him twice. If you have the chance to meet him personally maybe you can listen to a personal snippet of what the backbone of the Canadian mining industry is all about, borrowed cups of coffee meals on tabs in local restaurants, long nights in cold dark places, plain hard work, which sometimes doesn't get rewarded, and this time did.

Super good read, and tells it like it is.

A very well done book
This book is an exciting story about a modern-day adventurer.
This book follows Chuck Fipke all around the world and ends up in the Arctic.
I could not put this book down.

More about Chuck Fipke than the remarkable diamond discovery
As a keen observer of the stock market, I was quite interested to "dig" into the background of Chuck Fipke and how he discovered diamonds in the Canadian Arctic. When the Diamet discovery was first announced it was an extraordinary revelation to the "jaded" Canadian Mining community. Frolick does a very good job of embroidering the details of Fipke's exploits as a young, driven, globe-trotting geologist. His first job at Ok Tedi Gold Mine in Papaua New Guinea with BHP/Kennecott, working at the secretive JCI Gold in South Africa, the duplicity of Cominco management while in the Amazonian jungles etc. Unfortunately, the storey of the actual diamond discovery only takes 2 of 58 chapters!. Little is learned about the financial manouvering conducted behind the scence's by BHP and DiaMet after the discovery was announced and the book stops when Fipke's active involvement ends. One discovers little of the tremendous challenges faced and overcome before the actual production of the first commercial diamond discovery in North America. In sum, more of a hagiography to Chuck Fipke than the story of a remarkable mining achievement in Canada, but nonetheless - a worthwhile read.

Outstanding Book
Charles Fipke and the Great Diamond Hunt is a hard book to put down. Fipke's determination and ability to see beyond conventional wisdom should be a great inspiration to all readers. ... Read more

Book Description

Over the course of his life, American explorer William Clark sent dozens of letters to his brother Jonathan, including six written during the epic Lewis and Clark Expedition. This collection of Clark's intriguing letters-many published for the first time-reveals important new details about the expedition, Meriwether Lewis's mysterious death, the status of Clark's slave York, and life in Jeffersonian America. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Dear Brother
This is indeed a book full of history and tidbits that add to our current historical knowledge. I think that for the non-historian, it is difficult to read all of the notes at the end of each letter (usually longer notes than the letters themselves). I would love to see this book with many of the obscure notes removed and just the very important historical facts included to help explain what is being written about. I am loving learning about Lewis and Clark, but this book was more difficult than most.

A TREASURE CHEST OF HISTORICAL NUGGETS
This is the kind of book cherished by all lovers of frontier history--historical researchers and genealogists, as well as those who simply love to read about it. Not just a book of letters, but a lusciously annotated treasure chest of biographical information, and not just on the Clarks, but on the frame of frontier history which surrounded them.

The insights on William Clark and York are indeed interesting, but biographical sketches in the notes reveal arcane facts on Daniel Boone, General James Wilkinson, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and many others less known but equally interesting. Mr. Holmberg sometimes indulges in speculation and tentative assertions, but the demarcation between fact and inference is always clear.

The work is handsomely constructed, the font easy to read, the notes easy to follow. A complete bibliography is provided along with a complete index. All and all, a pleasure to peruse, a delight to own.

This book is a MUST for Lewis and Clark enthusiasts! BUY IT!
Mr. Holmberg's new forthcoming edition of letters discovered
in an old Louisville, Kentucky estate some two decades ago
will shed new light on many long unanswered questions regarding the life of William Clark, of Lewis and Clark Expedition fame.
Aside from being an archivist at Kentucky's prestigious Filson
Club which holds its own substantial William Clark collection,
Holmberg is himself an expert Lewis and Clark enthusiast who brings passion, intelligence, clarity and understanding to interpretation of these significant letters. I have been privileged to hear the lectures of Mr. Holmberg at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lewis and Clark Training Academies, and without a doubt this book and its letters give valuable
insight into the life of York, William Clark's slave and
fellow expedition member, the winter at Fort Mandan, William Clark's relationship with his wife, Julia, and his ongoing honest and open, although often grossly misspelled, literary discourse with his brother Jonathan. Readers of Ambrose's UNDAUNTED COURAGE will revel in this book as it gives further insight into the character of William Clark, who often gets
far less press coverage than the colorful figure of
Meriwether Lewis. Every Lewis and Clark enthusiast should
be sitting on the front porch swing awaiting the VERY MOMENT when the mailman delivers this upcoming Amazon offering. The fact that these unknown letters survived AT ALL is amazing. The added scholarship and editing added to the project by
one so respected in the field as Jim Holmberg makes the prospect of this literary work almost too grand to imagine.

Discovery of the letters of William Clark is as significant
as finding an undiscovered portrait of Lincoln. We knew the
man before the discovery, but now we will know him better! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A superbly presented primary source of American history
Strongly recommended for academic library collections as an American History primary resource, Exploring With Lewis And Clark: The 1804 Journal Of Charles Floyd presents a journal of expeditionary writings by Sergeant Charles Floyd, one of the first three men enlisted in Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. Born in 1782, Floyd kept a precise diary of the expedition, yet he sadly succumbed to a ruptured appendix and became the only member to die during this epic journey of discovery, losing his life near present-day Sioux City. Exploring with Lewis and Clark photographically reproduces the pages Floyd wrote in his own handwriting, a typeface transcript for easy reading, extensive historical and context notes, and a thoughtfully informative introduction. Skillfully edited by James Holmberg and illustrated with a handful of photographs and artwork, Exploring With Lewis And Clark is a superbly presented primary source of American history, and an impressive contribution to the study of the Lewis & Clark expedition that is not to be missed.
... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Volume 2 of 3. This 3-volume anthology of 194 articles (with 102 maps and illustrations) published between 1974 and 1999 in We Proceeded On, The quarterly journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Contributors include Stephen Ambrose, John Logan Allen, Paul Russell Cutright among other professional and amateur Lewis and Clark scholars. Vol. 1 ISBN 1582187614, Vol. 2 ISBN 1582187630 Vol. 3 1582187657. ... Read more

Book Description

In striking counterpoint to the conventional account, Pocahontas is a bold biography that tells the extraordinary story of the beloved Indian maiden from a Native American perspective. Dr. Paula Gunn Allen, the acknowledged founder of Native American literary studies, draws on sources often overlooked by Western historians and offers remarkable new insights into the adventurous life and sacred role of this foremost American heroine. Gunn Allen reveals why so many have revered Pocahontas as the female counterpart to the father of our nation, George Washington.

Reviews (2)

Generic and structural problems
I admire what Gunn-Allen tries to do in this work: to place Pocahontas within her Native context. Gunn-Allen has been a much-needed voice for the "background" of history, questioning the reader's engrained privileging of the foreground, but it doesn't work in the genre "nonfiction biography." That's perhaps more marketing's error than the author's, but I also found the treatment of Native culture to be occasionally reductionist. Surely not every tribal myth translated across tribal lines? To read Pocahontas' (Pamunkey) spiritual journey as a Laguna Pueblo myth, while suggestive, treats Native mythology as monolithic. Granted, Gunn-Allen does add many disclaimers distancing one from the other, but the myth's very placement at the head of the first chapter is misleading. Such structural difficulties persist throughout the work. The lack of clear proof for many of Gunn-Allen's readings also deterred me. Again, even if Native culture lived/lives outside such Western empirical structures as proof, the lack thereof is still off-putting in a work of "nonfiction." As the reviewer before suggested, "mythic narrative" is closer to the mark for this work.

If only we had more primary source material regarding Pocahontas! There may just not be enough existent for a full-length biography.

An Incoherent Work
This is a poorly written book that poses as a "history." What Gunn-Allen does is to take historical facts and mold them to her interpretation, taking a set of unproven and uncorroborated assumptions and building an elaborate case upon them. The writing is incoherent and, at times, illogical and should remain in the category of "myth narrative." While it offers some interesting historical and cultural insights, it does little to advance an understanding of Pocahontas, the individual, as much as it does to serve whatever agenda Gunn-Allen is promoting. ... Read more

Book Description

"Fortitude" is a romance-a fairytale about a young man who very naively believed in almost everything; one of the author's school stories based on his experiences as a teacher, and an epic account of another young writer in the making.Its opening line acts as a clarion call: "It isn't life that matters, but the courage you bring to it!" ... Read more

Book Description

H. W. Tilman has been called "arguably the best expedition writer and best explorer-mountaineer" of the 20th century.

· New in paperback
· Tilman (on reaching the summit of Nanda Devi):"I believe we so far forgot ourselves as to shake hands on it."
· Tilman (after arduous and ultimately unsuccessful attempts on two peaks in Central Asia, and his arrest as a spy): "as I turned to go down into Chitrail, tired, lousy, and bereft of my diaries, I felt that the year had at any rate been rich in instruction."

The W. L. Gore Shipton/Tilman Grant is named for Tilman, and his climbing companion, Eric Shipton, but too few Americans are aware of Tilman's remarkable gift for writing. This economically-priced paperbound includes: Snow on the Equator, The Ascent of Nanda Devi, When Men and Mountains Meet, Everest 1938, Two Mountains and a River, China to Chitral and Nepal Himalaya. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Guilty laughs in Tilmans' company
An avid collector of Himalayan subject matter, I have also been lucky enough to have wandered around the upper Langtang Valley on several occasions in the last few years. Not only is Tilmans book still accurate in many respects, but it is also highly amusing at the same time. Fact, folklore and quotations are fantastically woven into a single, almost epic tale of discovery. It is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, and yet one might feel a certain sense of guilt at particular comic moments. Where Tilman describes one of his porters as "slow in mind and weak in leg, and not, one suspects, long down from his tree", it is an hilarious turn of phrase, but in our modern standardised and easily-scandalised society one feels the need to look over one's shoulder to make sure the PC police aren't looking.
I would heartily recommend anyone to read the book, particularly if it is available, the Nepal Himalaya single edition, - great, great books for travelling minds (and soles..) so long as you can cope with the mountain of salt required to see some of Tilmans less emphatic points.

Exploration: life worth living.
Tilman and Shipton were the first humans to enter the Nanda Devi sanctuary, a valley surrounded by some of the greatest Himalayan peaks. They were indelibly marked by the experience.

Tilman, my uncle's traveling companion
Not only is Tilman's book brillantly written, but his chapter on "Two Mountains and a River," which focuses on the Swiss/British expedition to Rakaposhi and the Kukuay Glacier illustrates all the problems and hardships my uncle, Hans Gyr experienced during his quest for conquering the Rakaposhi in the Karakorum. Thanks to Tilman, I know now so much more about these few trying weeks in snow and ice. I recommend this book to all who like not only mountains, but solitude and the ultimate challenge.

One of the last great explorer-authors
In this anthology Tilman's pioneering travels through central Asia are recounted in his wonderfully laconic voice. This is a great addition to any exploration or mountaineering collection, particularly because Tilman was the first European to visit many of the peaks and places described. The portrait of Nepal he presents I will always treasure. ... Read more

Book Description

What is a "breechy" cow, a "churl" or a "dolly peg"? What did it mean to "cozen," to "swan" or to "rive"?

These words, like hundreds of others in this book, were common in the mid-1800s.

For anyone with an interest in how our pioneer ancestors spoke and wrote, or just have an interest in LDS history, this book is a must. Each unusual word is presented in an entertaining way that will please readers of all ages. For example:
Coot-n. (Colloq.) A common or stupid fellow.

Like most weekly papers in the early nineteenth century, the Saints' Evening and Morning Star carried a great deal of filler items from papers throughout the country. In 1832, it carried such a typical item on page 31:

"It seems that, at the Union celebration of the 4th of July, in Bishopsville, S.C. the coots poisoned the victuals which sickened all that eat, and one died."

So step into history, and gain some interesting and revealing insights. Even stump your friends! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A superb reference for anyone studying primary sources
Compiled and organized by Mormon historian George W. Givens, The Language Of The Mormon Pioneers is a straightforward dictionary of English words that were commonly used in the mid-1800s -- especially those by Mormon Pioneers -- and yet which have mostly fallen into disuse today. Terms such as "catechise" (verb - to question or interrogate); "priest bound" (adverb - overly controled by religious rules); "tippling house" (noun - a public house where liquor is sold by the drink), and more, these colorful archaic terms are succinctly presented with cited examples of usage drawn from historical real documents. A superb reference for anyone studying primary sources of American and Mormon history, The Language Of The Mormon Pioneers is a welcome and unique contribution to personal and academic Language Studies reference collections. ... Read more

Book Description

The New York Times has called James Prosek "the Audubon of the fishing world," and in Fly-Fishing the 41st, he uses his talent for descriptive writing to illuminate an astonishing adventure. Beginning in his hometown of Easton, Connecticut, Prosek circumnavigates the globe along the 41st parallel, traveling through Spain, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, China, and Japan. Along the way he shares some of the best fishing in the world with a host of wonderfully eccentric and memorable characters.

Reviews (1)

Exciting, thrilling, never a dull moment
I'd give this book six stars if it were allowed! Zenas Leonard came out to the American West as a fur trapper in 1831, this is his own narrative. He started out under the leadership of Captain Gant trapping beaver and traveling extensively throughout the west. Later he joined in with the famous Captain Joseph Walker expedition to explore a passage to California. You simply can not put this book down! Indians, grizzlies, starvation and thirst, freezing temperatures, more Indian troubles, first white men to see Yosemite and the Redwoods, one adventure after another! Vivid descriptions of what it was like back then. An engrossing book! ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Dreadfully incomplete
Every biography, if not of the encyclopedic type, has some profile, an outline of goals the author wants to reach. Often it is necessary to limit the scope of work, because there are other vast volumes on topic already written, and at the same time the topic allows for specialization. Unfortunately, the book by Tom Pocock does not venture in any kind of specialization, and instead, on less than 200 pages it attempts to present a uniform portrait of Captain Frederick Marryat. As the title suggests, an attempt is made to cover his literary heritage, his enormous seafaring experience, his political and military engagement, and of course worldwide travels. My disappointment is unbounded, really, and let me argue why this is the case.

To start with the most serious source of incompleteness of this volume, let me say that it does not offer any insight into the literary heritage of Captain Marryat whatsoever. From time to time, the author mentions that at this or that point in Marryat's life he was writing, published, or tried to publish this or that novel or a diary. Merely a line or two at most is devoted to the subject. For all it is worth, the whole content on literature is limited to one page in total. At the end of the book there is a list of the books written by this ingenious man. Pocock does not add anything worth writing home about about these books. I can't doubt that he read them, but if he did, he didn't show it. And this in the light of the fact that Marryat was the most popular writer in Europe of the 1830s! Marryat influenced many noble authors, starting with Melville and Conrad-Korzeniowski and ending with contemporary nautical fiction writers like Pat O'Brien, not to mention his indirect influence on anyone who has tried his pen in the field of adventure, maritime or not. Marryat and Dickens were great friends who supported and consulted each other in the time their lives overlapped, and the biographer merely focuses on the sociopolitical aspect of this friendship, as if he was not aware of profound literary influences which flowed both ways, and spread like an eagle over the whole Continent of writers, not to mention America. I hoped, in vain, to learn more than I had known beforehand about the connections between writers, Melville, Verne and Conrad-Korzeniowski in particular; I hoped to receive at least minimal treatment and analysis of the particular works of Marryat. I got none. The man basically gave birth to nautical fiction as we know it today, he created several immortal literary archetypes, he had a unique perspective of a naval officer, a writer and a brilliant social observer, and his diaries from travels to America and Canada deserved analysis "deeper" than just a brief quote or two. He wrote about children, about animals, and finally, in his literature of adventure as it was, he incorporated a wide array of themes, ranging from horror, mythology and magic to heavyweight topics of religion, the Holy Inquisition, warfare, exploration and competition. The potential reader of this volume should give up any such hopes. This book offers nothing of the kind.

Apart from writing, Marryat was a politically and socially active man, and even here the book fails, despite some coherent efforts on part of the author. In a dry style of a scribble, the biographer merely notes the events, as they came, only occasionally venturing into some analysis of what happened or did not happen and why. The biographer wrote other volumes, including books on Nelson, and I couldn't get rid of the impression that in the case of this book he simply recycled an old formula, and tried to fit an Alpha and Omega of a man like Marryat into a narrowly defined scheme. This couldn't have worked, and it didn't. Complete chunks of Marryat's lifetime were ignored in this way, while others were overblown out of proportion. Indeed, decency is a lost art on the part of the biographer, as the following fact indicates in light of what I have written about so far and what I chose to be silent about out of empathy. In at least two instances, if I remember well, Tom Pocock writes a small essay on the fact that one of his own ancestors knew Marryat, and desperately tries to input some meaning into the oh-so-distant relationship between the two men. Marryat, if asked, wouldn't remember the ancestor in question, but we are show otherwise. This is simply scandalous. To ignore half of Marryat's life in order to make space for this? Excuse me? This biography is outrageous, and although if you know nothing on the subject, it will be of some use, dishonest as it is, at the same time it is a complete waste of money otherwise.

Not justa writer -but also a good man in a tight corner!
This thoroughly enjoyable biography has only one drawback - its brevity. Though Marryat is largely known at present as a children's writer, his reputation in his own time rested on a series of adventure novels for adults based on his own very exciting career - he can fairly be claimed to have single-handedly invented the genre of naval fiction and to have set the pattern for Forrester, Kent, Pope and O'Brien. His own life - though cut off relatively early - was as exciting and varied as anything in his fiction: starting with near suicidal action under the legendary Cochrane, at sea almost constantly in the later years of the Napoleonic Wars in opposition to the French and Americans, returning home to develop a signalling system and commence a literary career and later returning to action in Burma, his service there involving the Royal Navy's first use of steamships in action and initiating the decline of the sailing navy in which Marryat had grown up. Marryat seems to have had a natural affinity for action - as a literary lion touring the United States in the 1830s he took time out to help put down a rebellion in Canada, and was once prosecuted for brawling in the streets of London - and his zest for life comes across well in Mr.Pocock's biography. Until Dickens arrived on the scene he was the foremost popular novelist in Britain, and even thereafter was a prominent figure in London literary circles - as he had been at Court earlier. He carried a raffish air of the Napoleonic and Regency periods into the growing respectability of early Victorian society and the account provided here of his discovery by an irate husband in an American lady's hotel room, and of the ingenious manner in which he appears to have extricated himself, hints at even more scandalous events that can only now be guessed at. Throughout the book Marryat comes across as a larger than life character who must have been a delight (and an exasperation) to know and a good man to have by one's side in a tight corner. One regrets however that this biography does not dwell more on the quality and content of Marryat's literary output and provide a better guide to the reader who would like to explore it further. This, and the brevity, aside, this is a most enjoyable book and can be highly recommended to anybody interested in the age of fighting sail, the advent of steam or the early Victorian literary scene. ... Read more

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In mid June 2003, Maud Fontenoy, a young woman and a mariner of long standing, set out from Newfoundland in her 24 foot boar Pilot to row across the Atlantic.Her goal: to prove woman could do the impossible.This is a tale of great adventure, tenacity and courage. ... Read more

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In 1826 an undersized sixteen-year-old apprentice ran away from a saddle maker in Franklin, Missouri, to join one of the first wagon trains crossing the prairie on the Santa Fe Trail. Kit Carson (1809-68) wanted to be a mountain man, and he spent his next sixteen years learning the paths of the West, the ways of its Native inhabitants, and the habits of the beaver, becoming the most successful and respected fur trapper of his time. From 1842 to 1848 he guided John C. Frémont's mapping expeditions through the Rockies and was instrumental in the U.S. military conquest of California during the Mexican War. In 1853 he was appointed Indian agent at Taos, and later he helped negotiate treaties with the Apaches, Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Utes that finally brought peace to the southwestern frontier.

Ralph Moody's biography of Kit Carson, appropriate for readers young and old, is a testament to the judgment and loyalty of the man who had perhaps more influence than any other on the history and development of the American West.

Western writer Ralph Moody (1898-1982) grew up in Carson territory in southeastern Colorado. He is the author of seventeen books, including Come on Seabiscuit! and his series Little Britches, all available in Bison Books editions. ... Read more

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Volume 3 of 3. This 3-volume anthology of 194 articles (with 102 maps and illustrations) published between 1974 and 1999 in We Proceeded On, The quarterly journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Contributors include Stephen Ambrose, John Logan Allen, Paul Russell Cutright among other professional and amateur Lewis and Clark scholars. Vol. 1 ISBN 1582187614, Vol. 2 ISBN 1582187630 Vol. 3 1582187657. ... Read more

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From the back cover: Big Tappan Kittery had learned to kill in the War. Killing became a nightmare, but the end of the war was not like waking up, because the nightmare didn't end. The bloodshed continued around Kittery like a plague, with Arizona Territory as its breeding ground...and the Desperados Eight as its breeders. There was only one way for Kittery to stop the killing...Take down the Devil.

With his seventh novel, The Devil's Blood, our author Kirby Jonas has put himself shoulder to shoulder with not only the greatest Western writers of all time, but in our opinion the greatest writers. Period. Jonas has developed his main character, Tappan Kittery, into the type of a character that anyone with any spirit of adventure would love to ride with, and he has woven this lawman's trail into a twisted web that the most jaded of readers will love. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Western Writing at it'sFinest! Every bit as good as Lamour!
Great western story with a hint of actor Clint Walker's personality involved with the title character. If you enjoyed Clint's western movies and the old Cheyenne Show then you will enjoy The Devil's Blood.

The Power of Kirby Jonas
My unsatiable appetite for books on the old west has found
momentary satisfaction in The Devil's Blood. Jonas has the
ability and talent to propel your mind and soul to the Arizona desert and foothills where characters are revealed in vivid dimensions. Where emotions and nature's sovereign power collide in panoramic grandeur. I am getting hungry again and anxiously await Jonas' next book written with western film legend Clint Walker. ... Read more

Book Description

This edition of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación offers readers Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz's celebrated translation of Cabeza de Vaca’s account of the 1527 Pánfilo de Narváez expedition to North America. The dramatic narrative tells the story of some of the first Europeans and the first-known African to encounter the North American wilderness and its Native inhabitants. It is a fascinating tale of survival against the highest odds, and it highlights Native Americans and their interactions with the newcomers in a manner seldom seen in writings of the period.

In this English-language edition, reproduced from their award-winning three-volume set, Adorno and Pautz supplement the engrossing account with a general introduction that orients the reader to Cabeza de Vaca’s world. They also provide explanatory notes, which resolve many of the narrative’s most perplexing questions. This highly readable translation fires the imagination and illuminates the enduring appeal of Cabeza de Vaca’s experience for a modern audience.

Rolena Adorno is the Reuben Post Halleck Professor of Spanish at Yale University and the author of several books, including Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru. Patrick Charles Pautz holds an M.A. in Spanish from Princeton University and is an independent scholar. Adorno and Pautz coauthored Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez (Nebraska 1999), winner of the American Historical Association’s 2001 J. Franklin Jameson Award, the Western Historical Association’s 2000 Dwight L. Smith Award, and the New England Council of Latin American Studies 2000 Best Book Award. ... Read more