Lone Cone Library

A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, clashes with overzealous period reenactors, and much more. In addition, he charts his own geographical and emotional journey while also delivering a richly...

Part high-seas adventure, part examination of the Age of Exploration, this account of Captain James Cook's last voyage in 1776 charts how his overt and covert missions came to a head on the island of Hawaii and left behind a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day.

Chronicles the life of Peter Freuchen, a wildly eccentric Dane whose insatiable curiosity and unquenchable thirst for adventure, guided by ideals remarkably ahead of his time, took him from the twilight years of Arctic exploration to the Danish underground during World War II.

In the tradition of Dava Sobel's Longitude comes sailing expert David Barrie's compelling and dramatic tale of invention and discovery-an eloquent elegy to one of the most important navigational instruments ever created, and the daring mariners who used it to explore, conquer, and map the world. Since its invention in 1759, a mariner's most prized possession has been the sextant. A navigation tool that measures the angle between a celestial object...

Chronicles the experiences of eighteenth-century Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk, the man who inspired the character Robinsone Crusoe.

April 2009 is the one-hundredth anniversary of perhaps the greatest controversy in the history of exploration. Did U.S. Naval Commander Robert Peary and his team dogsled to the North Pole in thirty-seven days in 1909? Or, as has been challenged, was this speed impossible, and was he a cheat? In 2005, polar explorer Tom Avery and his team set out to recreate this 100-year-old journey, using the same equipment as Peary, to prove that Peary had indeed...

The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told. The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual...

"The book is a biography of eccentric French fur trader Pierre Radisson, a man who helped shape the events of his time. Radisson spent his life trying to be an important part of the rather bizarre European beaver hat trade, but was stymied all his life. He lived through fantastic advenures: capture and adoption by the Mohawks in 1652, escape to early New York City, trading partner with the indigenous people of the Great Lakes, defecting from the French...

For over two centuries, the mysterious labyrinth of shafts and tunnels under Oak Island, a tiny island on Nova Scotia's South Shore, has been the scene of a frantic search by scores of treasure hunters from two continents. They believe that the shafts and intricate manmade flooding system hold the secret to a treasure of untold wealth. Although millions have been, spent, bitter feuds have erupted, and men have died, the treasure has, remained as elusive,...

"Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton led an expedition across Antarctica in 1914. Did you know that science played a big role in this dangerous journey? Learn how weather patterns affected the explorer in Antarctica. Find out the science behind Shackleton's ship, The Endurance . And discover how modern technology is being used to find out even more about this adventure more than 100 years later"--