Collects top nineteenth-century discovery voyage stories, including those about Fridtjof Nansen's solitary walk to the North Pole, Mary Kingsley's forays into the West African jungle, and Richard Burton's forbidden pilgrimage to Mecca. This anthology collects 35 examples of first-rate adventure writing from the nineteenth century, including excerpts from the Lewis and Clark journals, Mark Twain's Roughing It, and Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen's classic Farthest North. Editor Whybrow has culled accounts of journeys undertaken for personal, philosophical, or business reasons. She evinces an acute perception of the dramatic: quite a few of her choices involve narrow escapes from death, such as George Kennan's white-knuckler about his near shipwreck in the Sea of Okhotsk or alpinist Edward Whymper's tumble down the Matterhorn. Whybrow also picked several mountaineering stories by women and two by harbingers of the philosophy that nature was to be communed with rather than conquered: Henry David Thoreau (ruminating about Maine) and John Muir (ditto about Alaska). Such variety promises something to please every shade of taste for armchair adventure. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved HELEN WHYBROW is a book and magazine editor, freelance writer and organic farmer.