Hence, Austrian painter Christiane Ritter was at best ambivalent when her husband asked her to join him on the small Arctic island of Spitsbergen in a tarpaulin-covered hut sixty miles from the nearest neighbor. Yet his descriptions were filled not with cold and hardship but tales of remarkable wildlife, alluring light shows, and treks over water and ice. Won over, Ritter joined her husband and grew to love life on this small isle off Norway's coast, and in this charming memoir she describes her experiences, with insight and wry humor. Whether or not you ever plan a trip to the Arctic, A Woman in the Polar Night offers thoughtful reflections on isolation and the place the natural world holds in the human psyche.

    They wanted to escape civilization & live strictly according to nature. Without medical supplies, they came within inches of losing their lives, but they also found the serenity they were seeking. They built a bamboo cabin & lived off the land, struggling against myriad diseases. They lived to tell of hazardous inter-island voyages, their idyllic month-long stay with the last surviving Polynesian cannibal, their mixed relations with the islanders, their failures & successes in an entirely natural world. Fatu-Hiva was a turning point in Heyerdahl's life. It was there that he began to pick up a trail that would lead to the Kon-Tiki expedition. Ancient stone figures, the presence of such flora as the pineapple & local legends all pointed to an early migration from South America. At the time, this theory was considered outrageous. Heyerdahl would later prove it not only possible, but likely.List of IllustrationsFarewell to CivilizationBack to NatureWhite Men, Dark ShadowsExodusTabooOcean EscapeOn HivaoaIsland of Ill OmenIn the Cannibal ValleyCave DwellersIndex

    Tell My Horse is an invaluable resource and fascinating guide. Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experience in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of ceremonies and customs and superstitions of great cultural interest.

    Early 20th century American travel writer and adventurer Richard Halliburton presents this volume's tour for school students, introducing the people, religions, architecture, customs, and scenery from Greece to Mt. Fuji in Japan, multi-cultural regions then called "The Orient" and maps of his travel routes. Places featured are Greece and Ephesus, Turkey, King Mausolus's tomb, western Turkey, Colossus-Rhodes, off Turkey, Pharos-lighthouse, Alexandria, Egypt, Sphinx and Pyramids, Egypt, Pyramids Today-Cairo, Egypt, The Labyrinth-Crete, Slave City-western Africa, Victoria Falls, So Africa, Allahs children-Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Enchanted Temple-Petra, Holy Land, The Dead Sea, Rock of Abraham-Jerusalem, Solomon's Temple-Jerusalem, Temple of Jupiter, Syria, Queen of Palmyra, Syria, Bagdad, Persia/Iraq, Babylon-Iraq, Madrasa College and Isfahan-Persia, Udaipur-west India, Palace in Udaipur-west India, Taj Majal, India, Top of the World (Mt. Everest, Nepal/Tibet), Land of Mystery (Lhasa, Tibet), Palace of the Living Gods (Bhuddist Dalai Lama, Lhasa, Tibet), Thirty Million Idols (Hindu temple, Madura, southern India), Tale From the Jungle (Indo-China temple, Angkor, Cambodia), The Great Stone Serpent (Great Wall, China), Magic Mountain (Fujiyama, Japan) ~ From Wikipedia: Richard Halliburton (January 9, 1900 - presumed dead after March 24, 1939) was an American traveler, adventurer, and author. Best known today for having swum the length of the Panama Canal and paying the lowest toll in its history-thirty-six cents-Halliburton was headline news for most of his brief career. His final and fatal adventure, an attempt to sail a Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, made him legendary.

    The respected Greek novelist recounts his travels to the Orient in 1935, and provides vivid impressions of two cultures in a period of transition

    

    Excerpts from an acerbic diary kept by New Yorker columnist Margaret Halsey on her first trip to Europe just prior to the start of the Second World War.

    Morton decided to make a Christian pilgrimage from the Euphrates to the Nile, and into Sinai, and to tell the story of the Christian life of the Near East. His account describes the journey from Babylon to Baghdad, from Coptic monasteries to the churches of Rome.

    Eighteen months later he was dead, and Ruth decided to continue his expedition on her own.

    Madman's Island tells of six terrible months spent on a small island of the Howick Group with only a madman for company. In the struggle to keep alive, Idriess had desperate adventures and suffered the terrors of complete loneliness. Humour, grim realism and strange beauty mingle in this romantic tale, told with glowing vitality.Note this is the non-fiction version first published in 1938, not to be confused with the original 1927 fictionalised version.

    Out of their efforts came the American Guide series, the first comprehensive guidebooks to the people, resources, and traditions of each state in the union.The WPA Guide to Minnesota is a lively and detailed introduction to the state and its people. Much has changed since the book's first publication in 1938 when, as the authors noted, some Minnesotans could "clearly recall . . . the sight of browsing buffalo herds, and the creaking of thong-tied Red River carts." But the book vividly recaptures the era when annual fishing licenses cost fifty cents, farmers ran barn dances for motoring townfolk, Duluth was the headquarters of the Hay Fever Club of America, and the nearly new Foshay Tower loomed on the Minneapolis skyline.The guide has much more than nostalgia to offer today's readers. Twenty auto tours and six special city tours tell the stories of the state's people and places and offer a fascinating alternative to freeway travel. Essays on major themes such as native peoples, history, arts, transportation, and sports provide an authentic self-portrait of 1930s Minnesota in humorous, loving, and literary prose.This time-travelers' guide to Minnesota is an evocative reminder of the state's past and a challenge to contemporary readers who seek to find how that past lives on today.Special features include 20 road trips, 6 city tours, 15 boundary waters canoe trips, 12 maps, 22 drawings, an introduction by the renowned Midwestern writer Frederick Manfred, a chronology, and a revised bibliography.

    The map of Liberia was virtually blank, the interior marked 'cannibals'. It was a far cry from the literary London of 1935, and the marvellous result of exploration was Journey Without Maps. But the gifted young author was not travelling alone. His twenty-three-year-old cousin Barbara had rashly agreed to go with him and, unbeknown to him, was also busy making notes in the jungle.Too late to Turn Back contains the humorous, foot-sore and richly evocative African adventure of a young woman who set out from the world of Saki and the Savoy Grill and returned quite profoundly changed.

    This timeless work is an indispensable guide to the dances and dance-dramas of the Balinese.

    

    The explorations range from Europe through Africa to Central Asia. Frank S Smythe is more remembered as an explorer with an eternal love for nature, who was one of the early 20th Century explorers who brought many remote beautiful places in the Himalayas to the notice of civilization. Mountaineering and climbing the peaks to him was secondary. This was merely a part of his exploration work. Mentioning a few lines from the introduction of the book will render the basic plot of the book.Art progressed, but not so rapidly as the literature of the hills. Few of the greater artists turned their eyes to primitive beauties and the number of meritorious mountain paintings is lamentably few. The reason is simple : there is no more difficult subject for an artist than a mountain, for mountains, unlike the sea or a conventional landscape, are essentially static in quality ; they are inimical to life, and movement is restricted to clouds, streams and the play of the wind, whilst the scale on which they are built is as deceiving to the eye as it is to the brush. A skilful drawing or painting of hill scenery needs no justification, but the daubs which find their way into exhibitions--even into the Royal Academy-are proof that to any but an artist of exceptional skill and experience, who must perforce devote himself to his subject, hills are better left alone.”