Here are 100 books that The Lost White Tribe fans have personally recommended if you like
The Lost White Tribe.
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As an engineer, scientist, and historian, I’ve always been fascinated by how science has always served the political goals of nations and empires. Today, we look at the Space Race to land a person on the Moon as a part of the Cold War effort to establish the intellectual and cultural dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union, even as it created new technologies and completely changed our understanding of the world. When I came across the Geodesic Mission to the Equator 1735-1744, I realized that even in the 18th century, voyages of discovery could do more than simply find new lands to conquer and exploit–they could, and did extend our knowledge of nature and mankind.
Alexander von Humboldt’s name is synonymous with scientific discovery today–the Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and countless species named for him. Humboldt revolutionized our modern understanding of the natural sciences–geology, biology, meteorology, and much else–with his epic five-year voyage that set off in 1799 and brought him through the Amazon, the Caribbean, and North and South America.
Like Malaspina before him, Humboldt studied not only the flora and fauna of these regions but also their peoples and the political turmoil that was building towards revolution. He met with the leaders of the time–Thomas Jefferson and Simón Bolívar among them–and opened their eyes to the richness of their lands. Unlike Malaspina, Humboldt’s works were published to wide acclaim and established the idea that all nature, including human nature, is interconnected.
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016
'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson
'Dazzling' Literary Review
'Brilliant' Sunday Express
'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist
'A superb biography' The Economist
'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My interest in exploration and cross-cultural encounters is rooted in the experience of travel itself, which rests on the disorienting appeal of unfamiliar places and peoples. Exploration was also conducted for more practical reasons; sponsoring agencies sought to open up new markets, access new resources, and gain other material benefits. What interests me about the subject, then, is both its experiential and its instrumental dimensions. What doesn’t interest me is the myth of the explorer as a romantic hero, which was invented mainly to distract from these grubbier aspects of exploration.
Ok, I knew that the story of Thanksgiving taught in grade school was a myth, but until I read this book, I had no idea that this iconic event was so deeply embedded in a much larger, more complex relationship between colonists and Indians in Massachusetts.
Silverman explains why the Wampanoag forged an alliance with the Puritans and what a terrible price they paid for their decision. I was completely immersed in his richly detailed account of this early encounter between indigenous peoples and the interlopers who wanted their land.
Ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony's founding events, told for the first time with Wampanoag people at the heart of the story.
In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth's governor, John Carver, declared their people's friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the “First Thanksgiving.” The treaty remained…
My favorite part of being a journalist is interviewing people and getting to see the world through their eyes. I love books–fiction or narrative nonfiction–that captivate my attention and take me to places I would never otherwise get to explore. Here are five books that swept me off to tropical jungles, Siberian volcanoes, ancient civilizations, and helped me think about the world in new ways.
This book attempts to uncover the mystery of what happened to British explorer Percy Fawcett, who in 1925 set off into the Amazon jungle to find the lost “City of Z,” but never returned.
In retracing Fawcett’s steps, author David Grann finds something far more intriguing under the Amazonian jungle canopy: the hidden remains of a complex Indigenous civilization that has much to teach us about who we are today.
**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT PATTINSON, CHARLIE HUNNAM AND SIENNA MILLER**
'A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure'JOHN GRISHAM
The story of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the inspiration behind Conan Doyle's The Lost World
Fawcett was among the last of a legendary breed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon and came to believe that its jungle concealed a large, complex civilization, like El Dorado. Obsessed with its discovery, he christened it the City of Z. In 1925, Fawcett headed into the wilderness with his son Jack, vowing to make history. They vanished without a…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
My interest in exploration and cross-cultural encounters is rooted in the experience of travel itself, which rests on the disorienting appeal of unfamiliar places and peoples. Exploration was also conducted for more practical reasons; sponsoring agencies sought to open up new markets, access new resources, and gain other material benefits. What interests me about the subject, then, is both its experiential and its instrumental dimensions. What doesn’t interest me is the myth of the explorer as a romantic hero, which was invented mainly to distract from these grubbier aspects of exploration.
Clendinnen’s book is a pleasure to read because it personalizes the first encounter between explorers and indigenous peoples, causing me to care about the two parties and sympathize with the challenges they faced.
Clendinnen tells the story of the first British fleet to arrive in New South Wales, Australia, and the subsequent efforts by Britons and Aborigines to comprehend one another and find grounds of mutual interest. Perhaps her greatest achievement is to provide real insight into the views and aims of the Aborigines, even though they, unlike the British, left no first-hand record of this seminal event.
By humanizing both parties, Clendinnen made me more emotionally invested in this encounter’s tragic outcome.
In January 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women encountered the people who would be their new neighbors. Dancing with Strangers tells the story of what happened between the first British settlers of Australia and the people they found living there. This 2005 book offers a reading of the earliest written sources, the reports, letters, and journals of the first British settlers in Australia. It reconstructs the difficult path to friendship and conciliation pursued by Arthur Phillip and the local leader 'Bennelong' (Baneelon); and then traces the painful destruction of that…
I'm an Anglo-Dutch writer living in the Netherlands, and the author of two books. Growing up in England I never thought much about rivers, but in the Netherlands they’re hard to avoid, and I’ve become fascinated by them. These days, when we all work remotely and (when rules allow) usually travel by car, train, or plane rather than boat, it’s easy to think of rivers as just scenic backdrops, rather than anything more important. But the truth is many of our cities wouldn’t exist without the waters which flow through them, and waterways like the Rhine, Thames, and Seine have had a huge influence on the history and culture of the people living alongside them. If you want to understand why somewhere like Rotterdam, London or Paris is the way it is, you could spend the day in a library or museum – but you’d be better off going for a boat ride or swim, poking around under some bridges and talking to the fishermen, boatmen, and kayakers down at the waterline.
The White Nile is another classic, telling the story of how European explorers “discovered” Africa’s greatest river in the second half of the nineteenth century. It’s a rollicking tale, featuring cameos from everyone from Herodotus to Churchill, packed with wild tales of bull-headed men marching into areas which were, for them, literally blank spaces on the map. Some of the prose inevitably feels a little dated these days, but it overflows with drama and detail, and provides a fascinating insight into the history of a region which many people still know too little about. I lived near the source of the Nile in Uganda for quite a while, and have many happy memories of reading this before heading out for a swim.
Relive all the thrills and adventure of Alan Moorehead's classic bestseller The White Nile -- the daring exploration of the Nile River in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was at that time the most mysterious and impenetrable region on earth. Capturing in breathtaking prose the larger-than-life personalities of such notable figures as Stanley, Livingstone, Burton and many others, The White Nile remains a seminal work in tales of discovery and escapade, filled with incredible historical detail and compelling stories of heroism and drama.
My idea of ‘good fiction’ – and what I try to write myself – involves secret agents and skulduggery, crime, and romance. My own life has involved a good deal of travel. I studied Education and Drama, then Literature, History, and Politics at post-graduate level. All of which help with my research and writing. As a British ex-pat, I have lived in the USA and different parts of Europe. Now, we are finally settled near Málaga, Spain. ‘Deep-reading’ fiction set in fascinating places, quality content to indulge in on dark winter nights. I hope you enjoy your time travel as much as I do.
I’m not a great Wilbur Smith fan, but I read this story because it involves trade with India in the age of sail and the monsoon, and it has stayed with me. There is a sweeping plot taking an 18th Century Englishman on a perilous voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean, memorable characters, victims of greed and perpetrators of evil, and some brilliantly described action scenes. If you want some edge-of-your-seat armchair travel, this novel will take you on a real adventure to far-away places.
BOOK 10 IN THE EPIC HISTORICAL SAGA OF THE COURTNEY FAMILY, FROM INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER WILBUR SMITH
'Smith will take you on an exciting, taut and thrilling journey you will never forget' - The Sun
'With Wilbur Smith the action is never further than the turn of a page' - The Independent
'No one does adventure quite like Smith' - Daily Mirror
THEY LEAVE AS BROTHERS. THEY RETURN AS MEN.
The East India Trading Company is under attack from pirates. Under orders from the King himself, famed sailor Hal Courtney makes the dangerous journey to Madagascar with his young sons, charged…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
As a teenager, I wondered why my state, Maryland, didn’t include Delaware. Later, at the University of Wisconsin, I wondered why its northeastern peninsula was part of Michigan. Then I started wondering about boring borders -- why Colorado’s and Wyoming’s lines are where they are and not a mile or so so this way or that? I ended up writing How the States Got Their Shapes, followed by The People Behind the Borderlines.
Some of our state lines were cultural borders. The Colony of Massachusetts was founded by and for Puritans; Maryland was created for Catholics; Pennsylvania for Quakers. That process continued after the Revolution, regardless of state (or later-to-become state) lines. Colin Woodard’s book explores the founding of such cultural regions and reveals how those not-on-the-map lines influence our differing views to this day.
* A New Republic Best Book of the Year * The Globalist Top Books of the Year * Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction *
Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who in this presidential election year, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven "nations" that continue to shape North America
According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering…
I’m a retired English prof with a lifelong interest in history. My father fostered my fascination with Civil War battlefields, and growing up in Florida, I studied the Seminole wars in school and later at FSU. While teaching at the University of Idaho (nearly 50 years), I pursued my interest in the Indian wars of the mid-19th century and developed a curiosity about tribes in the inland Northwest, notably the Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, and Nez Perce. My critical biography of Blackfeet novelist James Welch occasioned reading and research on the Plains tribes. I recommend his nonfiction book,Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate the Plains Indians.
Aside from the Colorado landmark, Pike’s Peak, most of us know little of Zebulon Pike. A relative passed along the tee-shirt, but that’s as close as I got before reading Jared Orsi’s account of Lieutenant Pike’s 1805-07 fascinating expeditions to the headwaters of the Mississippi and to the Rockies. Pike strives to establish friendly relations among the Ojibway and Dakotah and later among the Osage and Pawnee while introducing the tribes to their new landlords, the U.S. government under President Jefferson. In attempting to ascend the peak, Pike and his men suffer near starvation and death in bitter cold and waist-deep snow, only to be rescued and arrested by the forces of New Spain. Orsi approaches the expeditions from an environmental perspective.
Today Zebulon Pike's name is immortalized at Pikes Peak, the second most visited mountain in the world after Japan's Mount Fuji. It overlooks the town of Colorado Springs, where historian Jared Orsi teaches. Orsi was inspired to take up this biography not just by geography but also because there has been no modern interpretation of the life of this key explorer in American history. His life sheds considerable life on the early national period and on the American frontier.
Born during the Revolution Zebulon, Pike came of age with the nation. Trained as a soldier and stationed at various frontier…
Why I chose to write about cold climates: I spent nearly seven years living in the North of Norway in the Sámi reindeer herding village called Guovdageaidnu, or Kautokeino in Norwegian. I cherish my time in that part of the world.
I had never been to Greenland when I first read Gretal Erlich’s book, and I knew very little about this mysterious continent. What I loved most about Erlich’s writing is that she really takes readers on a journey, introducing us to the people she meets in her travels, which are as fascinating as her singular way of describing the landscape, which is like no other place on earth.
Many years later, I travelled to Greenland and appreciated the accuracy of her descriptions firsthand.
For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the treacherous beauty of a world that is defined by ice. In This Cold Heaven she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of us could otherwise imagine.
Ehrlich unlocks the secrets of this severe land and those who live there; a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the twenty-three words…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’m obsessed with travel, and have spent years ambling the planet. I’m also an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Durham University—I spend lots of time reading books, and occasionally writing them. Travel and philosophy can help us make sense of our magnificent, peculiar world.
Spinsters Abroad set out to celebrate Victorian women traveller such as Mary Kingsley, Amelia Edwards, and Isabella Bird. However, Birkett quickly discovered that these women were not straightforward role models. Yes, they travelled Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, braving hardship, and making all kinds of discoveries along the way. But it turns out, they managed that because their whiteness trumped their gender. Spinsters Abroad reveals the complexity of these women’s travels, andtheir lives and worlds. It reflects on their motivations for travel, as well as how Victorians conceived gender and race. The book is also jam-packed with anecdotes. Here is Edwards complaining about flies interrupting her watercolour painting of Egyptian ruins: ‘Nothing disagrees with them; nothing poisons them - not evenolive-green’.
What spurred so many Victorian women to leave behind their secure middle-class homes and undertake perilous journeys of thousands of miles, tramping through tropical forests, caravanning across deserts, and scaling mountain ranges? And how were they able to travel so freely in exotic lands, when at home such independence was denied to them? This book draws upon the diaries and writings of more than 50 such women to describe their experiences and aspirations. Many of the journeys they made are re-constructed - Mary Gaunt's voyage along the West African coast, Mary Kingsley's jungle treks, Amelia Edwards's thousand-mile journey up the…
