The great explorers were the celebrities of their day - the romance and danger of their daring expeditions captured the public imagination and the world's headlines to an extraordinary degree. Not all...

Stranded on Bering Island - Georg Wilhelm StellerAs physician and scientific know-all on Vitus Bering's 1741 voyage, Steller shared its triumphs, including landing the first Europeans in Alaska. He also...

Eating Dirt in Venezuela - Alexander von HumboldtGeographer, geologist, naturalist, anthropologist, physician and philosopher, Baron von Humboldt brought to exploration a greater range of enquiry than...

Escape from Riyadh - William Gifford PalgraveA scholar and a solider, a Jesuit and a Jew, a French spy and a British ambassador- Palgrave was a man of contradictions, all of them highly compromised when...

Four Years in the Ice - John RossDisgraced and dishonored for his report of an imaginary mountain range blocking the most likely access to the North West Passage, in 1829 Ross returned to Canada's frozen...

Alarms amongst the Uzbeks - Alexander BurnesOf all the "forbidden" cities (Timbuktu, Mecca, Lhasa, Riyadh and so on) none enjoyed a more fearsome reputation that Bukhara in Uzbekistan. The first British...

Among the Sudanese - James BruceBruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1771, a century before the search for the source of the White Nile became headline news. His descriptions of the cruelties...

Landfall at Botany Bay - James CookThe son of a Yorkshire farm labourer, Cook won distinction as a naval hydrographer but was still a controversial choice to command a voyage of scientific observation...

Alone in Africa - Mungo ParkPark's 1795-7 odyssey in search of the Niger first awakened the world to the feasibility of a white man penetrating sub-Saharan Africa. But unlike his illustrious successors,...

Farthest South - Ernest Henry ShackletonBorn in Ireland, Shackleton joined the merchant navy before being recruited for Captain Scott's 1901 expedition to Antarctica. He was with Scott on his first attempt...

First Crossing of America - Alexander Mackenzie"Endowed by nature with an acquisitive mind and an enterprising spirit", Mackenzie, a Scot engaged in the Canadian fur trade, resolved, as he out it "to...

The first modern history of all South Asia’s peoples. If British India had not been partitioned in 1947, its population would today be the world’s largest. At c1.5 billion, Midnight’s Descendants...

A vivid description of one of the most ambitious scientific projects undertaken in the 19th century, and the men who undertook the measurement of the Himalayas and the mapping of the Indian subcontinent:...

The story of both a dramatic journey retracing the historic voyage of France’s greatest 19th-century explorer up the mysterious Mekong river, and a portrait of the river and its peoples today....

An authoritative account of five thousand years of Chinese history Many nations define themselves in terms of territory or people; China defines itself in terms of history. Taking into account the country's...

A history of the English East India company. During 200 years the East India Company grew from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into "the grandest society of merchants in the universe"....

The most authoritative and highly regarded single-volume history of India – from ancient time to the modern day. Five millennia of the sub-continent’s social, economic, political and cultural history...

Three thousand years of Chinese history in an accessible and authoritative single volume. Despite the recent rise of China to a position of dominance on the world economic stage, Chinese history...

Two hundred years ago, India was seen as a place with little history and less culture.Today it is revered for a notable prehistory, a magnificent classical age and a cultural tradition unique in both...

‘There is no one-volume book in print that carries so much valuable information on London and its history’ Illustrated London News The London Encyclopaedia is the most comprehensive book on London ever...