| Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II
| On May 13, 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La,” a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea. Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton’s bestselling novel Lost Horizon, this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals. But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miracul...More
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| Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure
| When Admiral Richard E. Byrd set out on his second Antarctic expedition in 1934, he was already an international hero for having piloted the first flights over the North and South Poles. His plan for this latest adventure was to spend six months alone near the bottom of the world, gathering weather data and indulging his desire “to taste peace and quiet long enough to know how good they really are.” But early on things went terribly wrong. Isolated in the pervasive polar night with no hope ...More
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| Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
| The astonishing saga of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as Time magazine put it, "defined heroism." Alfred Lansing's scrupulously researched and brilliantly narrated book -- with over 200,000 copies sold -- has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the Endurance's fateful trip. To write their authoritative story, Lansing consulted with ten of the surviving members and gained access to diaries and personal accounts by eigh...More
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| South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
| As war clouds darkened over Europe in 1914, a party led by Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to make the first crossing of the entire Antarctic continent via the Pole. But their initial optimism was short-lived as ice floes closed around their ship, gradually crushing it and marooning twenty-eight men on the polar ice. Alone in the world's most unforgiving environment, Shackleton and his team began a brutal quest for survival. And as the story of their journey across treacherous seas and a wildernes...More
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| In a Sunburned Country
| Read by the authorSix cassettes, 10 hoursJust in time for the 2000 Olympics-the bestselling quthor of A Walk in the Woods takes listeners on a truly outrageous tour Down Under.Compared to his Australian excursions, Bill Bryson had it easy on the Appalachian Trail. Nonetheless, Bryson has on several occasions embarked on seemingly endless flights bound for a land where Little Debbies are scarce but insects are abundant (up to 220,000 species of them), not to mention crocodiles.Taking li...More
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| The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andree and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration
| In this grand and astonishing tale, Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer “the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration,” Andrée’s expedition was followed by nearly the entire world, and it made him an international legend. The Ice Balloon...More
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| The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History)
| There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever. In this absolutely riveting account of a key moment in the history of World War II, one of America's leading naval historians, Craig L. Symonds paints an unfor...More
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| Big Miracle
| Set in Cold-War-era 1988, Big Miracle is the real story behind the remarkable, bizarre and often times uproarious event that mesmerized the world for weeks. On October 7, an Inuit hunter found three California Gray Whales imprisoned in the Arctic ice. In the past, as was nature's way, trapped whales always died. Not this time. Rose compellingly describes how oil company executives, Greenpeace activists, Eskimos, businessmen, and military officers heroically worked together to save the whales. Th...More
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| We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance
| One of the most exciting escape narratives to emerge from the challenges and miseries of World War II chronicles Jan Baalsrud’s escape from Nazi-occupied arctic Norway.
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| Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure
| Around 200 A.D., intrepid Polynesians arrived at an undisturbed archipelago. For centuries, their descendants lived with little contact from the western world. In 1778, their isolation was shattered with the arrival of Captain Cook. Deftly weaving together a memorable cast of characters, Lost Hawaii brings to life the ensuing clash between a vulnerable Polynesian people and relentlessly expanding capitalist powers. Portraits of royalty and rogues, sugar barons, and missionaries combine i...More
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| South Sea Tales
| The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Oceania;
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| Unfamiliar Fishes
| From Puritans to heathens-Sarah Vowell takes on Hawaii in this New York Times bestseller. Of all the countries the United States invaded or colonized in 1898, Sarah Vowell considers the story of the Americanization of Hawaii to be the most intriguing. From the arrival of the New England missionaries in 1820, who came to Christianize the local heathens, to the coup d'état led by the missionaries' sons in 1893, overthrowing the Hawaiian queen, the events leading up to American...More
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| Red Zone Baghdad My War in Iraq
| When Colonel Marcus Fielding returned home from his tour of duty in Baghdad, a taxi driver asked him what it was like being a soldier there. Marcus, an experienced veteran, found himself speechless – how could he properly explain to a civilian the nature of his work and his life during his tour? He mouthed a few platitudes but felt frustrated: he had not done justice to his experience or to his fellow soldiers still in Iraq.This book is the result of that frustration, and it provides fascinati...More
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| The Jesus of History
| This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed work...More
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| The Worst Journey in the World
| Cherry-Garrard, who accompanied Robert Falcon Scott to the Antarctic on the explorer's doomed quest for the South Pole, recounts the unforgettable journey across forbidding, inhospitable terrain. He was also a member of the search party that ultimately discovered Scott's frozen body along with his last notebook entries. With an introduction by the author, this tale of adventure stands out as a literary accomplishment as well as a classic of exploration.
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| Hawaiian Folk Tales (Forgotten Books)
| This is an anthology of Hawaiian folklore, including pieces by Thomas Thrum and other writers. This includes many articles which were originally published in difficult to obtain journals and now-rare books. All were written in the late 19th or early 20th century, and are mostly based on first-hand oral traditions. Chapters cover topics such as resemblances to Biblical stories, myths of the gods and goddesses such as Maui and Pele, historical legends, topographical folklore, and the folklore of f...More
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| Maori and Settler a Story of the New Zealand War
| The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge.
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| A Night to Remember
| She was the world's biggest-ever ship. A luxurious miracle of twentieth-century technology, the Titantic was equipped with the most ingenious safety devices of the time. Yet on a moonlit night in 1912, the "unsinkable" Titantic raced across the glassy Atlantic on her maiden voyage, with only twenty lifeboats for 2,207 passengers. A Night To Remember is the gut-wrenching, minute-by minute account of her fatal collision with an iceberg and how the resulting tragedy br...More
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| Pacific (the Official Hbo/Sky TV Tie-in)
| *Private Sidney Phillips *First Lieutenant Austin Shofner *Ensign Vernon Micheel *Private Eugene Sledge *Sergeant John Basilone Through the eyes of these five fearless and devoted men, Hugh Ambrose tells the epic story of the war in the Pacific. It is an intimate, personal history of a brital, unforgiving conflict.
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| Aquariums of Pyongyang
| North Korea today is one of the last bastions of hard-line Communism. Western historians and researchers have had little access to information about North Korea apart from official Party documents and propaganda. This book marks the first time that a victim of the regime has provided a personal and documented insight into the labour camps, the organized famine, and the political conditioning within this "hermit kingdom". Kang Chol-Hwan was arrested at the age of nine along with other members of ...More
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