Best of
Travel

1955

Tristes Tropiques


Claude Lévi-Strauss - 1955
    His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of ‘primitive’ man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact.

High Adventure: The True Story of the First Ascent of Everest


Edmund Hillary - 1955
    Gnawing at reason and enslaving minds, it has killed many and defeated countless others. But in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stared into its dark eye and did not waver. On May 29, they pushed spent bodies and aching lungs past the achievable to pursue the impossible. At a terminal altitude of 29,028 feet, they stood triumphant atop the highest peak in the world. With nimble words and a straightforward style, New Zealand mountaineering legend Hillary recollects the bravery and frustration, the agony and glory that marked his Everest odyssey. From the 1951 expedition that led to the discovery of the Southern Route, through the grueling Himalayan training of 1952, and on to the successful 1953 expedition led by Colonel John Hunt, Hillary conveys in precise language the mountain's unforgiving conditions. In explicit detail he recalls an Everest where chaotic icefalls force costly detours, unstable snow ledges promise to avalanche at the slightest misstep, and brutal weather shifts from pulse-stopping cold to fiendish heat in mere minutes. In defiance of these torturous conditions, Hillary remains enthusiastic and never hesitates in his quest for the summit. Despite the enormity of his and Norgay's achievement, he regards himself, Norgay, and the other members of his expedition as hardworking men, not heroes. And while he never would have reached the top without practiced skill and technical competence, his thrilling memoir speaks first to his admiration of the human drive to explore, to understand, to risk, and to conquer.

Tiger of the Snows: The Autobiography of Tenzing of Everest


Tenzing Norgay - 1955
    The autobiography of Tenzing of Everest

Wild America: The Record of a 30,000 Mile Journey Around the Continent by a Distinguished Naturalist and His British Colleague


Roger Tory Peterson - 1955
    There they began a strenuous and thrilling hundred-day field trip around the edge of the continent. Part travelogue, part epic natural adventure, their richly illustrated record is "the superlatively good product of ideal circumstances" (Chicago Sunday Tribune).

The Last Wilderness


Murray Morgan - 1955
    First published in 1955, this book tells the lively and entertaining story of the Olympic Peninsula, "the fist of land thrust north between Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean, a wilderness area of six thousand square miles, as large as the state of Massachusetts, more rugged than the Rockies, its lowlands blanketed by a cool jungle of fir and pine and cedar, its peaks bearing hundreds of miles of living ice that gave rise to swift rivers alive with giant salmon; the first land in the Pacific Northwest to be reported by explorers, the last to be mapped--the last wilderness." Murray Morgan has recorded the epic adventures of the pioneers of this remote region in this rousing and humor-filled saga, one that should capture the imagination of Americans everywhere.

The Last Kings of Thule: With the Polar Eskimos, as They Face Their Destiny


Jean Malaurie - 1955
    A young scientist studying in the Sahara Desert, he was granted permission to conduct an expedition in the “cold desert" around the North Pole. There he would be living among the northernmost people of the world, the Polar Eskimos of Thule, Greenland.The men of Thule were a race apart. Through geographical isolation and the social planning of Greenlandic Eskimo explorer Knud Rasmussen, they had managed for decades to maintain an advanced, self-sufficient Inuit culture independent of their colonial masters, the Danes. They were truly kings: strong individualists, heroic hunters. Yet they continued to maintain a form of pure communalism, sharing food, property, labor — even offspring and sexual mates. Thievery was practically unknown among them. In all of Greenland there was no jail.This is the society into which Jean Malaurie was granted intimate entry for one historic year. His experience was the last of a kind for at the end of that year the U.S. government built a huge military base in the middle of Thule Eskimo territory. The isolation was over: the modern world had won,Rarely has a book come to the English-speaking public with such advance status: translated into sixteen languages, with encomiums from adventurers, naturalists, and scholars alike, with worldwide sales in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Some readers have hailed the anecdotal side of Eskimo life depicted here; others the harrowing adventures such as the crossing to Canada by dogsled; still others the profound understanding of the Inuit character or the stirring account of Eskimo regeneration in the seventies and eighties.Like the great Eskimo adventure books from decades past—by Elisha Kent Kane, Frederick Cook, Robert Peary — The last Kings of Thule continues the saga of man’s triumph in the Arctic. More than those works, it paints for us the exemplary life of the polar Eskimos as they were—and are becoming again. Jean Malaurie’s portrait is not only a lesson and inspiration for the 100,000 Eskimos in the United States, Canada, Greenland, and the USSR, but a human model for all mankind.

A Rose for Winter


Laurie Lee - 1955
    He found a country broken by the Civil War, but the totems of indestructible Spain survive; the Christ in agony, the thrilling flamenco cry, the gypsy intensity in vivid whitewashed slums, the cult of the bullfight, the exultation in death, the humour of hopelessness and the paradoxes deep in the fiery bones of Spain. Rich with kaleidoscopic images, A Rose for Winter is as evocative as the sun-scorched landscape of Andalusia itself.Cover Photograph: Irene Lamprakou

യൂറോപ്പിലൂടെ | Europpiloode


S.K. Pottekkatt - 1955
    'Europiloode' documents his journeys through Naples, Pompei, Rome, Vatican, Switzerland, Paris etc.

A Cure for Serpents


Alberto Denti di Pirajno - 1955
    The autobiography of the Duke of Pirajno, who worked for eighteen years as a doctor in Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland.

Ennin's Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law


Ennin - 1955
    A complete translation of the diary written in Chinese by the Japanese Buddhist monk Ennin 圓仁, or Jikaku Daishi 慈覺大師 (793-864), during his travels in China between the years 838 and 847.

Half-Safe: Across the Atlantic by Jeep


Ben Carlin - 1955
    It covers sourcing, building, testing and then setting off in the amphibious jeep from North America across the Atlantic to the western Sahara, before driving it up to England and undertaking a protracted rebuild.

Qataban and Sheba: Exploring the Ancient Kingdoms on the Biblical Spice Routes of Arabia


Wendell Phillips - 1955
    In Yemen, he was to discover Marib, the capitol of Shebaland, and uncover the great moon temple of Awwam, only to be turned on by Arab tribesman and only just escape with his life. From there, he went on to unveil the secrets of Oman.

The Dillard House Cookbook and Mountain Guide


Fred Brown - 1955
    The Dillard House Cookbook and Mountain Guide, located in Dillard, Georgia, contains recipes for: Appetizers; Breakfast; Breads; Soups; Salads; Meats; Side Dishes; Cakes, Pies and Desserts; Barbecue; Traditional Mountain Foods; Jams, Jellies and Relishes.

Leopards in the Night: Man-Eaters and Cattle Raiders in Nyasaland


Guy Muldoon - 1955
    His account of those years areinteresting and exciting. The book contains photographs in support of the text.