 | The Conquest of New Spain (Penguin Classics) by Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $4.58 An absolute favorite. Like many on the list, you need to read this one for the audacity, not for the brutality. Truly unbelievable narrative of Cortez's arrival in Mexico City. Burn the ship on arrival, nonchalant descriptions of battles, political negotiations with rival natives, human sacrifices.
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 | Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa by Mungo Park
Buy new: $24.95 / Used from: $6.94 This Victorian adventurer traveled to Timbuktu and back. River life on the Niger, starvation, slave trade at its source, Mungo's own stint as a slave.
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 | The Journals of Captain Cook (Penguin Classics) by James R. Cook
Buy new: $9.36 / Used from: $4.94 Life at sea in 18th century. Discovery of Hawaii by Europeans.
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 | Roughing It (Dover Value Editions) by Mark Twain
Buy new: $9.95 / Used from: $4.85 Timeless: Twain is irreverent and amusing as he gets across the sense of place. In this case, the Wild West.
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 | The Innocents Abroad (Dover Value Editions) by Mark Twain
Buy new: $11.01 / Used from: $4.63 Twain again, this time travelling to Europe on a steamer.
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 | Eldorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire by Bayard Taylor
Buy new: $30.99 / Used from: $20.00 Reporter sent by Horace Greely via Panama to report on the gold rush.
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 | Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K'ang-Hsi by Jonathan D. Spence
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $2.99 Very unusual: experience the perspective of a Chinese Emperor, 1661-1722.
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 | The Cruise of the Corwin: Muir's Final Great Journey by John Muir
Buy new: $12.44 / Used from: $9.58 All of John Muir's books that I have read are engaging. This one tells the story of an 1881 search mission for a lost ship in the Arctic. Early Alaska, glacier climbing.
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 | The Letters of the Younger Pliny (Penguin Classics) by Pliny the Younger
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $2.25 From the Roman Empire, in the first century AD. Eyewitness to the eruption of Pompeii. Daily life and musings of a wealthy citizen of Rome.
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 | Sufferings in Africa: The Astonishing Account of a New England Sea Captain Enslaved by North African Arabs by James Riley
Buy new: $11.66 / Used from: $2.47 A New England merchant ship wrecks on the coast of modern Morrocco in 1815. Captured, enslaved, transported across the Sahara.
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 | History of My Life, Vols. 1-2 by Giacomo Chevalier de Seingalt Casanova
Buy new: $28.63 / Used from: $16.29 The ultimate romp through baroque Europe. Royalty, penury, commerce, alchemy, nunneries, the Inquisition, executions, politics. This is just volume 1 and 2: you will want to read all 5,000+ pages.
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 | Stedman's Surinam: Life in an Eighteenth-Century Slave Society. An Abridged, Modernized Edition of Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam by John Gabriel Stedman
Buy new: $27.69 / Used from: $11.98 Stedman was a minor officer in the Carribean slave colony in Surinam. Stories of the colonists, the slaves, and the runaway/rebels. Misery, brutality, plantations, swamps, insurrection.
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 | Head Hunters of the Amazon: My Adventures in the Jungle, 1894-1901 by F. W. Up De Graff
Buy used from: $12.95 From 1894, a New York college boy travels up the Amazon. Lifestyles of the natives, rubber trading, shrunken heads, anaconda, ants, alligators.
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 | How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa (Dover Books on Travel, Adventure) by Henry M. Stanley
Buy new: $17.96 / Used from: $14.02 Forget about the search part: the trek across central Africa is arduous to say the least.
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 | Two Years Before the Mast: And Twenty-Four Years After by Richard Henry Dana
Buy new: $18.96 / Used from: $1.12 Life on a merchant ship in the 1830's.
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 | The Nagle Journal: A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, from the Year 1775 to 1841
Buy used from: $0.57 A diary of an early 1800's sailor, who served with George Washington and Admiral Nelson, and sailed to India, China, South America and Australia.
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 | Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (Volume 1) by Richard Burton
Buy new: $12.71 / Used from: $2.95 In 1853 this Englishman travelled to Medina and Mecca disguised as an Arab. Two volumes. Life on the pilgrimage route, ceremonies, mosques, commerce, and the risk of being found out.
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 | Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833 by Charles Tyng
Buy new: $19.00 / Used from: $0.75 Memoir of a a prosperous Boston merchant captain, from his start as a ship's boy. Pirates, mermaids, Hawaii, China. Also provides a pretty good sense of the business of merchant trading.
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 | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Barnes & Noble Classics) by Frederick Douglass
Buy new: $4.95 / Used from: $0.44 Life as a black slave in America.
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 | The Journey and Ordeal of Cabeza de Vaca: His Account of the Disastrous First European Exploration of the American Southwest by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
Buy new: $8.95 / Used from: $4.15 Amazing story of survival and adventure. Stranded in 1500's in Florida, he walks to Mexico over the course of several severe years.
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 | The Travels of Ibn Battuta: in the Near East, Asia and Africa, 1325-1354 (Dover Books on Travel, Adventure) by Ibn Battuta
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $4.95 Arab traveller in 1300's
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 | The Cruise of the Snark: Jack London's South Sea Adventure by Jack London
Buy new: $11.66 / Used from: $8.07 a lighter book by Jack London, who takes his wife for a sail across the Pacific.
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 | Sailing Alone Around the World: The first solo voyage around the world by Joshua Slocum
Buy new: $10.75 / Used from: $6.98 The title tells it all.
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 | The Discovery Of The Amazon: According To The Account Of Friar Gaspar De Carvajal And Other Documents by Jose Toribio Medina
Buy new: $44.78 / Used from: $43.55 Swept down the rapids in 1500's Peru and unable to get back, Orellana's expedition floated down 2,000 miles of Amazon river, built a ship, sailed back around to Panama, walked across, built another ship, and sailed back to Peru.
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 | The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $0.45 1300's Venetian visits Kublai Khan
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 | My Life (Oxford World's Classics) by Benvenuto Cellini
Buy used from: $0.86 Life of an artist.... court intrigue, 16th century Italy
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 | Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by Richard P. Feynman
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $3.67 What is more distant in time and place than a bunch of geniuses in the desert working on the Manhattan Project? Feynman makes it sound like a science fair project.
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 | Travels in West Africa by Mary H. Kingsley
Buy new: $25.51 / Used from: $17.75 This is really amazing: English gentlewoman mucks through mangrove swamps in a dress.
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 | The Adventures of Captain Bonneville by Washington Irving
Buy used from: $82.35 Early American narrative of a western explorer, before the west was won.
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 | The Last Grain Race (Travel Literature) by Eric Newby
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $8.00 Aboard the Mosholu, one of the last clippers, as an 18 year old apprentice.
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 | Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $5.00 Read any of Studs Terkel's books: this one on the Depression is especially germaine, but Working and The Good War are equally good.
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