adventure

This slim volume of Hawaii’s natural history was compiled when Hawaii was still a territory of the United States (Hawaii became a state in 1961.).  Written in an accessible style, it positively brims with information about Hawaii from the formation of its volcanos and history of its indigenous people to the cellular make-up of the Portuguese Man-of-War and the destructive quality of Hawaiian rats.

Dark Companion chronicles the polar expedition of African American explorer, Matthew Henson. Born in 1866, four years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Henson went on to triumph as one of the first men to “stand on top of the world." On April 6, 1909, Henson along with Robert Peary co-discovered the North Pole. Hundreds had previously attempted and failed to reach the elusive polar ice cap.

You may know the names of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, or Pat Garrett. But what about Buss Luckey, the Rufus Buck Gang, the Lighthorsemen, or Zeke Miller? Although whites dominate popular depictions of the lawless west, Black, Red and Deadly presents the sagas of African-American and American Indian outlaws and bona fide law enforcers in Indian Territory. Luckey was an African American convicted bandit who dynamited a train carrying $60,000 in gold bullion.

This very rare copy of the second edition from 1752 was once owned by rocket scientist Frederick Ordway III, spaceflight visionary and consultant on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, this work of fiction by Voltaire is a work akin to Gulliver's Travels, but set in outer space.

Black Stars in Orbit is an overview of the first African Americans who were selected to be astronaut candidates, the first who worked for NASA on new technologies for mission projects, and the first to travel to space as part of the NASA Space Shuttle program. This volume is beatifully illustrated and contains brief biographical overviews.

The Expedition Citroën crossed Africa (from October 1924 to June 1925) to establish a reliable automobile link between French territories in West Africa and Madagascar. Tourists, businessmen, and government officials would be able to travel in comfort, riding in Citroën’s new half-track vehicles and lodging in specially built, rather luxurious accommodations. The sixty-three photographs included in this volume are invaluable records of people, customs, and dwellings seen along the way.  The most iconic image is the head elongation and elaborate coiffure of the Mangbetu woman.

The year is 1890. The French public is eager to learn more about the new colonies that France has won in the "Scramble for Africa." Colonel Henri-Nicholas Frey addresses their curiosity by compiling this geography, which describes in vivid detail the people, places, and things on the coastal regions of West Africa, from southern Morocco to the Congo. Frey draws on his own military experience in West Africa, but his primary sources are the writings of explorers, missionaries, and travelers to the region.

Authentic early images of West Africans are rare—and quite sought after. David Boilat offers us just such a portfolio in Esquisses Sénégalaises, published in 1853. The twenty-four color plates are remarkable for their attention to details of clothing, jewelry, hair styles, skin color, and facial features. His accompanying text describes, with remarkable equanimity for his time period, pertinent customs and behaviors ranging from the admirable to the deplorable—all judged from the local point of view.

The British National Antarctic Expedition (1901 – 1904), commonly called the Discovery Expedition, was a trailblazer of British exploration of the South Pole.  It launched the careers of leading figures of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Ernest Shackleton, who competed with Roald Amundsen to be the first person to reach the South Pole and died in a later Antarctic exploration in 1921.  This volume contains information discovered on that expedition, including tidal, pendulum, and magnetic observations; earthquakes and other geological movements; and aurorae.  Signif

This little 19th-century gem, The World in Miniature: Africa, was written to satisfy the curiosity of the British public about unknown Africa.  Based on eye-witness accounts written by the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who died in West Africa in 1806, the fifty-three chapters cover a wide range of topics: Geography, natural history, ethnicity, types of government, systems of justice, arts and crafts, warfare, food, women, and slavery. The most engaging features in these tiny tomes are the forty-five hand-colored engravings and two maps.

This copy of one of Jules Verne’s most celebrated adventure tales has an elusive past. With no publication date, an annotation on its inside cover dated ‘1925,’ and a blind stamp minted 1932 on the title page from the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, this book presents just as much wonder itself as the story it features. The Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex (SLRA) discovered that this copy of Verne’s work, among others, had been released by Chicago-based publisher M.A. Donohue in the early part of the Twentieth Century.

First published in 1942, Beryl Markham's "West with the Night," account of her expatriate life in Africa as a well-born English woman, horse trainer, and bush pilot was well received by critics, including Ernest Hemingway. She was the first woman to fly from Europe to North America solo in 1936. Her original book was re-published in the 1980s and was acclaimed by new readers who made it a best seller. This particular edition was published in 1989 and contains photographs and illustrations not in the original work.    

Zane Grey, the American author famous for his popular Western adventure novels, published this non-fiction work in 1919. In addition to being a dentist and writer, Grey was an avid fisherman. This title is full of zesty and manly fishing adventures of watching and wrestling with big game fish off the coast of southern California and is tastefully illustrated with photos taken by the author.

In 1871, seventeen-year-old Fred Dellenbaugh, under the lead of Major John Wesley Powell, a Civil War hero and the first director of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology, journeyed into the Grand Canyon and its subsidiary canyons and rivers with the intention of exploring, mapping, and recording descriptions of the uncharted territory. The men found themselves battling the great force of the Colorado River, with its fatal, quick rapids and mighty waterfalls. This is Dellenbaugh’s personal story, written thirty years after the great adventure.