The Mammoth Book of Endurance and Adventure

by Lewis, Jon E.

• ISBN13: 9780786707881
• ISBN10: 0786707887
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-16
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Fifty vivid true-life accounts from the Great Age of Exploration, in the words of the intrepid adventurers who survived to tell the tale. Inspired by Sir Ernest Shackleton's account of his Antarctic expedition aboard the Endurance and including his own gripping tale of an 800-mile voyage across polar waters on a lifeboat, this anthology comprises fifty true-life adventures taken from contemporary memoirs, letters, and journals -- among them, selections by Thor Heyerdahl on the Kon Tiki, Edmund Hillary on Everest, Robert Falcon-Scott on the South Pole, Chris Bonnington on the Blue Nile, Wilfred Thesiger on the Arabian desert, and Beryl Markham on her east-to-west flight across the Atlantic.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
The Poles	1	(80)
Last Man Walking	3	(13)
Douglas Mawson
The Blow	16	(6)
Richard Evelyn Byrd
Adrift on the Ice	22	(16)
Salomon Andree
88° South	38	(9)
Ernest Shackleton
The March to Fort Enterprise	47	(16)
John Franklin
Thin Ice	63	(5)
W. Elmer Ekblaw
The End	68	(13)
Robert Falcon Scott
Mountains	81	(104)
Death Zone	83	(17)
Walter Bonatti
Cotopaxi	100	(9)
Sebastian Snow
Mirror, Mirror	109	(15)
Ed Drummond
The Long Grind	124	(11)
Edmund Hillary
Extreme Danger	135	(12)
Maurice Herzog
Dog Days	147	(13)
A.J. Barrington
Across the Great Divide	160	(17)
Meriwether Lewis
William Clark
Deluge	177	(8)
Laurens Van der Post
Oceans & Rivers	185	(100)
The Boat Journey	187	(20)
Ernest Shackleton
The Reef	207	(13)
Thor Heyerdahl
Atlantic Ordeal	220	(9)
Alain Bombard
The Cataracts of the Zaire	229	(8)
John Blashford-Snell
Race Against Time	237	(5)
Ranulph Fiennes
Riding a Guianese Cayman	242	(5)
Charles Waterton
River of Doubt	247	(19)
Theodore Roosevelt
Holed	266	(11)
Steven Callahan
Storm	277	(8)
John Ridgway
Chay Blyth
Under the Ground	285	(48)
The Abyss	287	(34)
Norbert Casteret
Rapture	321	(12)
Jacques Cousteau
Deserts	333	(92)
Dying of Thirst	335	(13)
Sven Hedin
Crossing the Empty Quarter	348	(14)
Bertram Thomas
Slow Death at Cooper's Creek	362	(17)
William John Wills
The Crossing	379	(11)
Nick Danziger
The Sands of the Gobi	390	(12)
Niklai Nikhailovich Przhevalski
Escape from the Outback	402	(6)
Ernest Giles
The Pitiless Sun	408	(5)
Peter Fleming
Prisoners of the Sand	413	(12)
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Jungles	425	(32)
Amazonia Extremis	427	(16)
Henry Savage Landor
Man-Eater	443	(14)
Jim Corbett
The Air	457	(20)
Spirit of Saint Louis	459	(18)
Charles A. Lindbergh
Sources & Acknowledgments	477