Great Expeditions: 50 Journeys that Changed Our World

by Levison Wood, Alan Greenwood

Foreword by Levison Wood, presenter of Walking the Americas. A comprehensive, fascinating and inspiring gallery of the great adventures that changed our world.Throughout history there have been brave men and women who dared to go where few had gone before. They broke new ground by drawing on incredible reserves of courage, fortitude and intelligence in the face of terrible adversity. Their endeavours changed the world and inspired generations.Spanning several centuries and united by the common theme of the resilience of the human spirit, this is the ultimate collection of the stories of the intrepid explorers who forged new frontiers across land, sea, skies and space.50 incredible journeys including;• Tenzing and Hillary’s conquest of Everest• Neil Armstrong’s giant leap• Christopher Columbus’ new world• Amelia Earhart flying the Atlantic• gold fever in the Yukon• the hunt for a man-eating leopard in IndiaGreat Expeditions includes not only some of the most famous journeys in history but also introduces many more that ought to be more widely recognised and celebrated.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Geography

264 pages, Hardcover

Published October 6, 2016

Reviews

[Chris Edwards]

3.5 stars. An interesting book where I learnt a lot of historical events I'd previously not known about - a good starting point for further reading. However, each chapter is pretty much just a summary of the events and doesn't really offer insight into why the particular journey 'changed the world' - the reader is left to work that out themselves apparently.

[Caitlin Sumner]

Very light on detail, there were some journeys I've already read in depth that could have been summarised much better. Also this issue is rife with formatting issues, the occasional missing word, and even improper grammar. Who ever read through to check for errors wasn't very good at their job.

[Bill McLane]

A pretty light read that serves as a great stepping stone to read more in depth about the expeditions that interest you most.

[introventurer]

3.5 ✨

[Kim Walker]

This book summarizes a host (50) amazing feats of human endeavor. Truly inspiring stories, tidily presented in manageable bites. Readers will get a taste of the extraordinary adventures that will fuel further, more detailed reading on on the events that intrigue them most.

Exactly what I was looking for. An enjoyable read.

[Triinu]

Minu arvamuse leiab blogist https://triinuraamatud.wordpress.com/...

[Linda Cousens]

This is a book for anyone who is interested in adventure travel or history.

From stories about Sir Edmund Hilary's summit of Mount Everest in 1953, Christopher Columbus' discovery of the new world, Amelia Earhart's flight across the Atlantic, to Terry Fox' run across Canada, this book contains some of the world's most incredible journeys.
Every one is a true story of unparalleled courage and the sheer force of will.

[Mary Byrne]

The book covers 50 expeditions and as such there is not a lot of detail for any one expedition. I read this book out of an interest in which tales would be told. What I did like about the book is the broad definition of “expedition”. It includes ground breaking scientific expeditions that would have involved many people, starting with the first landing on the moon and including the Voyager probes. There are the major land expeditions to the poles, the Northwest passage, the Amazon, excursions into Africa, Australia, North America, some well known and others less so. A bias towards non-indigenous exploration reflecting our written records and the need for some challenges due to a lack of knowledge or understanding or integration with local information. But there is also the epic journey of Molly, Daisy and Grace’s 1,600 km trek along the rabbit proof fence to return home from forced removal to a mission station, the Trail of Tears of the displaced Native American Indians, the Rainbow Warrior expedition of Greenpeace that has helped save our whales. The photos are very good. Overall a good selection.

[L]

Really enjoyed this book. It has a really good selection of journeys, not just the standard white European man discovers (i.e. conquers) other countries, although plenty of those are covered too, but there's a decent mix of other people and journeys that aren't all about conquering.
I'm giving it 4 stars because obviously in a book like this there are some sections I'm more interested in than others. It was a good mix of people/expeditions I knew a bit (or a lot) about, ones I'd heard of but knew nothing about, and ones I'd never even heard of. Each section is maybe 3-4 pages long and just gives a brief overview, but I'm inspired to search out full books about the journeys or people I'm most interested in, and that's partly why I read it.
I read this over quite a long period, just dipping in and reading a chapter or two when I had a few minutes spare instead of looking at my phone, which was also a pleasure!

[Epp Petrone]

Seda raamatut loeme praegu koduõppe korras koos mu 9-aastase tüttrega. Tegelikult on see täiskasvanuile mõeldud teos, aga sobib kindlasti ka noorematele. Fotode ja kaartidega illustreeritud rännakud, suurejoonelised ja ajaloolised. Kuule. Ümber planeedi. Üle ookeani. Lõunapoolusele. Mount Everestile. Mina kõiki neid rännakuid varem ei teadnud, nii mõnestki seiklusest lugesin nüüd esmakordselt, näiteks kuidas kolm aborigeentüdrukut läbi kõrbe vangistusest tagasi koju põgenesid või mismoodi pääses lääneilma esindaja kinnisesse islami linna. Minu jaoks on see raamat ka nagu värav teemadesse, mitme loo puhul soovisin juurde guugeldada, et leida veel infot, võimalusel ka pikemaid raamatuid või filme antud teemal. Loomulikult on teksti võimalik nimetada pinnapealseks, aga samas, võtkem seda jah kui väravat edasi...

[Jack]

Leif Ericsson to Ed Stafford; the Mariana Trench to Mt. Everest; the desert to the poles we are told. Sounds grand in scope but a little mundanely written. Herein we find 50’of the great expeditions of the last 1000 years.

I was familiar with maybe 50% of these tales and the ones I was aware of made clear the difficult task of supplying a riveting tale in such few pages. The authors tended a rather formulaic structure to each section and wrote encyclopaedically. Can’t blame them and the fact first telling meant my knowledge of geography was increased significantly.

Shame that some sections were wokey but that’s the way of the world and exploration and environmentalism do very much coalesce.

[BookWormGirl]

What a fabulous book, so many amazing stories. My only complaint on some of them is that they are a bit short that I felt I was missing a lot. But that only spurred me on to read more about them.

Admittedly I knew the bones of some of these stories, but others I had no idea and they were such an eye opener.

If you’re looking for a book to whet your appetite for people you want to read more about, this is it!

[Lydia]

Good overview and starting point for some of the most influential and famous explorers of the last 10 centuries, but there is no chronology to this book? It’s not in alphabetical order, time period or theme. It’s just… random. That’s annoying. To add to my annoyance there is NO BIBLIOGRAPHY which in my opinion is a crime worthy of dropping 2 stars from this. That’s just unacceptable in a book of this nature. So yeh, serious improvements could be made.

[Heather]

I enjoy reading about adventures, especially the real-life kind, so this book was a treat. It runs, briefly, through fifty accounts of exploration around the globe, above the globe, and within the globe. A lot I had already learned of, others were new and exciting to learn about, and some I felt didn't quite belong in the category of "great expeditions".

As much as I enjoyed reading about all of these adventures, I was distracted a lot by some layout errors. It needs a bit of proofread.

[Heiko Vainsalu]

Hea sissejuhatus, et konkreetsete ekspeditsioone edasi uurida. Raamat ise liialt pinnapealne.

[Reelika Raimet]

https://raamaturiiulike.wordpress.com...

[Sal]

Very good concise descriptions of the various journeys - enough information to give you the flavour of the journeys but not too much so you don't get bogged down.

[Xiaoman Zhang]

A lot I did not know and now I know after reading the book.

[Piret Peensoo]

Palju häid eeskujusid, kuidas mõelda suurelt.

[Gary]

Snapshots of a wide array of journeys and adventures: excellent in presenting lesser known expeditions.

[Sara]

3.75

[Thomas Hewitt]

Spectacular and really brings some fascinating stories to light. Also doesn't whitewash a lot of the colonial writings which is nice.

[Wesley Croft]

An enjoyable enough read if you want brief essays on topics you wish to research further one day.

For a trad published Collins book the amount of grammatical and editing errors was concerning.

[Catherine]

Good to find accounts you might want to read more about. Bad editing.

[Doug]

Fifty mini history lessons in one volume. Half of which knew nothing, or hardly anything about. Great little reference and great bedtime reading.

[Meena]

I never read non-fiction but this title grabbed my eye in the Greenwich Maritime Museum.

Each expedition only has 4-5 pages of description, so the level of detail is low. Some are better written than others. And I'd argue that many did not change the world. The book is very Eurocentric but it was still an enjoyable read.