In 1947, Heyerdahl and five other adventurers attempted to sail from Peru to Polynesian on a balsa wood raft to prove that the Pacific islands could have been populated this way on ancient rafts. The result is an inspiring and gripping adventure.

An updated edition including new color photographs and a new afterword looking back at the journeyAlastair Humphreys’ around-the-world journey of 46,000 miles was an old-fashioned adventure: long, lonely, low-budget, and spontaneous. Cycling across five continents and sailing over the oceans, his ride took four years to complete, on a tiny budget of hoarded student loans. Here is the story of the first remarkable stage of the expedition. Just two weeks into the ride the September 11th attacks changed everything. All Humphreys’ plans went out the window and, instead of riding towards Australia, he suddenly found himself pedaling through the Middle East and Africa and on toward Cape Town. This book recounts an epic journey that succeeded through Humphreys’ trust in the kindness of strangers, at a time where the interactions of our global community are more confused and troubled than ever.

In 1941, the author and six other fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp in Yakutsk--a camp where enduring hunger, cold, untended wounds, untreated illnesses, and avoiding daily executions were everyday feats. Their march--over thousands of miles by foot--out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India is a remarkable statement about man's desire to be free.

This riveting bestseller tells the story of the true events that inspired Melville's Moby-Dick.

In 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale, leaving the desperate crew to drift for more than ninety days in three tiny boats. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents and vivid details about the Nantucket whaling tradition to reveal the chilling facts of this infamous maritime disaster.

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death.

The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave.

How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival, and a poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship.

After a terrible rafting accident, one man is separated in the Amazon jungle, and forced to survive for weeks alone against one of the wildest backdrops on the planet. Stranded without a knife, map, or survival training, he must improvise shelter and forage for wild fruit to survive. As his feet begin to rot during raging storms, as he loses all sense of direction, and as he begins to lose all hope, he wonders whether he will make it out of the jungle alive.

The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard—the youngest member of Scott’s team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey.

"...to travel what War and Peace is to the novel... a masterpiece'" - New York Review of Books

When your life plan explodes, you ask yourself the big questions: What do I really need in life? How can I make my life a work of art? Should I buy a house? Have kids? What is a life? Following in Kerouac and Steinbeck's tire tracks, a 32-year-old, post-breakup Brendan Leonard hits the road in search of healing and a new, post-economic-downturn American Dream. Sleeping in the back of a beat-up station wagon, he seeks answers—and hopefully, the occasional shower—in the postcard-worthy places of the American West. Part ballad to the romance of the road and part heart-searching treatise on the American Dream, The New American Road Trip Mixtape is Leonard's raw, often hilarious, barstool storytelling at its best.

In 1943, Felice Benuzzi and two Italian compatriots escaped from a British POW camp in equatorial East Africa with only one goal in mind--to climb the dangerous seventeen-thousand-foot Mount Kenya.

No Picnic on Mount Kenya is the classic tale of this most bizarre and thrilling adventure, a story that has earned its place as a unique masterpiece of daring and suspense.

The Folio Society have been publishing specially crafted editions of the worlds finest literature since 1947. They cover a diverse range of titles and care and attention is paid to every detail from elegant typography to specially commissioned illustrations, stunning photography and top quality print and binding.

In this collection you'll find everything from remarkable tales from the golden age of exploration to thrilling adventures in fascinating countries and cultures.