Describes the top ten explorers whose expeditions changed the world.

Children will discover stories about people who traveled across land, over and under the sea, and into space to help us expand our horizons beyond ordinary expectations. Includes Sacagawea, Neil Armstrong, Jacques Cousteau, Isabella Bird, Yuri Gagarin, Gertrude Bell, and more.

This classic study includes the following chapters: I. From Liverpool to Onitsha II. The Ibo Country III. The Ibo Country (continued) IV. The Ibo Village V. Child Life VI. Courtship and Marriage VII. Ibo Men—Young and Old VIII. Ibo Women and Their Ways IX. Polygamy and Slavery X. Death and Burial Rites and Ceremonies XI. Sports and Pastimes XII. The Ibo at Work XIII. The Yam—The Ibo Staff of Life XIV. Palms—For Use and Profit XV. Some Arts and Crafts XVI. Arts and Crafts for Women XVII. Music XVIII. Trade and Currency XIX. War and Weapons XX. Some Aspects of Religion XXI. Sacrifice and Sacrifices XXII. Secret Societies XXIII. In the Shadow of Death XXIV. Chiefs and Their Orders XXV. Some Points of Etiquette XXVI. Fables—Folklore-Proverbs XXVII. The Day of Better Things XXVIII. Christianity and Islam

Penetrating biographies written by a group of distinguished travel writers, broadcasters, and historians reveal the lives, motives, and passions of forty major explorers in history. It has always been mankind’s gift, or curse, to be inquisitive, and through the ages people have been driven to explore the limits of the worlds known to them—and beyond. Here are the stories of forty of the world’s greatest explorers from Europe, America, Asia, and Australia. These are men and women who changed our perception of the world through their courageous adventures. Organized thematically, the book opens with the oceanic journeys of five hundred years ago, when the great era of recorded exploration began. The following sections look at The Land, Rivers, Polar Ice, Deserts, Life on Earth, and New Frontiers. Many of these explorers recounted their journeys in vivid firsthand accounts; others were superb artists or photographers. The book features quotes from their journals and reports, and it is illustrated with paintings, photographs, engravings, and maps, so that we can experience their adventures through their own eyes and in their own words. Featured explorers include: Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, James Cook, Lewis and Clark, Richard Burton, Samuel de Champlain, David Livingstone, Roald Amundsen, Gertrude Bell, Alexander von Humboldt, Yuri Gagarin, and Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Although a host of adventurers stormed west in 1806 after Lewis and Clark's safe return, seven of them left unique legacies because of their monumental journeys, their lionhearted spirit in the face of hardship, and the way their paths intertwined time and again. The Perilous West tells this riveting story in depth for the first time, focusing on each of the seven explorers in turn - Ramsay Crooks, Robert McClellan, John Hoback, Jacob Reznor, Edward Robinson, Pierre Dorion, and Marie Dorion. These seven counted the Tetons, Hells Canyon, and South Pass among their discoveries. More importantly, they forged the Oregon Trail-a path destined to link the Atlantic coast with the Pacific, spurring national expansion as it carried trappers, soldiers, pioneers, missionaries, and gold-seekers westward. The Perilous West begins in 1806, when Crooks and McClellan meet Lewis and Clark, and the vast expanse from the Dakotas to the Pacific coast appears a commercial paradise. The story ends in 1814, when a band of French Canadian trappers rescue Marie Dorion, and even John Jacob Astor's well-financed enterprise has ended in violence and chaos, placing the protagonists squarely in the context of Thomas Jefferson's monumental opening of the West, which stalled with the War of 1812.