Cranston Public Library

"For a long time, most people believed that Christopher Columbus was the first explorer to 'discover' America--the first to make a successful round-trip voyage across the Atlantic. But in recent years, as new evidence has come to light, our understanding of history has changed. We know now that Columbus was among the last explorers to reach the Americas, not the first"--Book jacket.

Professor Challenger leads an expedition to explore an isolated plateau rising above the Amazon jungles where they discover dinosaurs, primitive ape-men, and prehistoric monsters.

His two companions were dead, his food and supplies had vanished in a crevasse, and Douglas Mawson was still one hundred miles from camp.

On January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to

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Offers insight into the historical events that prompted Columbus' efforts to establish new trade routes to the Indies, his struggles to obtain financial support for his voyages, and the important discoveries that caused him to become known as the "Great Admiral of the Seas."

"Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism in a deluxe edition with a gripping cover by 'Hellboy' artist Mike Mignola. 'Heart of Darkness' is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer recounting his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. Traveling upriver into the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic, wraith-like figure. Marlow's discovery...

"The human story has always been one of perseverance-often against remarkable odds. The most astonishing survival tale of all might be that of 16th-century Dutch explorer William Barents and his crew of sixteen, who ventured farther north than any Europeans before and, on their third polar exploration, lost their ship off the frozen coast of Nova Zembla to unforgiving ice. The men would spend the next year fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing...