300 Years of Robinsonades

300 Years of Robinsonades PDF Author: Emmanuelle Peraldo
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527548406
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) has had an enduring and widespread impact, becoming a universal myth. This volume offers various approaches to the rewriting of the desert(ed) island myth of the novel. Its originality comes from the time range covered, as its focus ranges from medieval proto-Robinsonades to twentieth-century cinematic adaptations. It begins with an exploration of Robinsonades written before Robinson Crusoe, prompting discussion about the label “Robinsonade” and why critics have seen Defoe’s narrative as the hypotext of the genre. Robinson Crusoe can only be understood in the context of the imperial expansion of Britain in the 18th century and the rise of capitalism, but Robinsonades adapt to the audiences they address. At the turn of the 19th century, despite the changing context and the increasingly unrealistic claim that one could be stranded on a desert island fertile enough for rebuilding a new life and civilization, the myth of Robinson resurfaced in R. L. Stevenson’s and Joseph Conrad’s fictions. The 19th century was also marked by industrial revolution, progress and scientism, and the authors who wrote Robinsonades at that period witnessed how those developments changed the world. The volume includes a discussion of Jules Verne’s work as a critical perspective on colonial narratives, and deals with transmedial and transgeneric approaches, analysing the bridges and comparisons between the depictions of such narratives in literature, cinema, and television. Finally, the volume proposes a topical approach to the genre by focusing on the link between literature and the environment, and how the Robinsonade can awaken people’s consciences and help make a difference in the world. Bearing in mind the idea that Robinsonades can be wake-up calls, the epilogue of this volume offers a very original comparison between the Robinsonade and the political situation in Great Britain regarding Europe.

Naked and Marooned

Naked and Marooned PDF Author: Ed Stafford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698145747
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
What do you do after you walk the Amazon? Ed Stafford—adventurer extraordinaire and Guinness World Record holder for walking the length of the Amazon River—likes a challenge. Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for sixty days equipped with nothing—no food, water, or even clothing—except the video cameras he would use to document his time. Detailing Stafford’s jaw-dropping sojourn on the island of Olourua, Naked and Marooned is a tale of unparalleled adventure and of one man’s will to push himself to the outer limits—and survive.

Walking the Amazon

Walking the Amazon PDF Author: Ed Stafford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0452298261
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
From the star of Discovery Channel's Naked and Marooned comes a a riveting, adventurous account of one man’s history-making journey along the entire length of the Amazon—and through the most bio-diverse habitat on Earth. Fans of Turn Right at Machu Piccu and readers of Jon Krakauer and Bill Bryson and will revel in Ed Stafford's extraordinary prose and lush descriptions. In April 2008, Ed Stafford set off to become the first man ever to walk the entire length of the Amazon. He started on the Pacific coast of Peru, crossed the Andes Mountain range to find the official source of the river. His journey lead on through parts of Colombia and right across Brazil; all while outwitting dangerous animals, machete wielding indigenous people as well as negotiating injuries, weather and his own fears and doubts. Yet, Stafford was undeterred. On his grueling 860-day, 4,000-plus mile journey, Stafford witnessed the devastation of deforestation firsthand, the pressure on tribes due to loss of habitats as well as nature in its true-raw form. Jaw-dropping from start to finish, Walking the Amazon is the unforgettable and gripping story of an unprecedented adventure. Walking the Amazon is also available as a Spanish edition entitled Caminado El Amazonas.

438 Days

438 Days PDF Author: Jonathan Franklin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501116290
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The miraculous account of the man who survived alone and adrift at sea longer than anyone in recorded history. For fourteen months, Alvarenga survived constant shark attacks. He learned to catch fish with his bare hands. He built a fish net from a pair of empty plastic bottles. Taking apart the outboard motor, he fashioned a huge fishhook. Using fish vertebrae as needles, he stitched together his own clothes. Based on dozens of hours of interviews with Alvarenga and interviews with his colleagues, search and rescue officials, the medical team that saved his life and the remote islanders who nursed him back to health, this is an epic tale of survival. Print run 75,000.

Skeletons on the Zahara

Skeletons on the Zahara PDF Author: Dean King
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0759509697
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
b.A masterpiece of historical adventure, ISkeletons on the Zahara The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub -- and its barren and ever-changing coastline has baffled sailors for centuries. In August 1815, the US brig Commerce was dashed against Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility, starvation, dehydration, death and despair. Captured, robbed and enslaved, the sailors were dragged and driven through the desert by their new owners, who neither spoke their language nor cared for their plight. Reduced to drinking urine, flayed by the sun, crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand and losing over half of their body weights, the sailors struggled to hold onto both their humanity and their sanity. To reach safety, they would have to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger of those who would keep them in captivity. From the cold waters of the Atlantic to the searing Saharan sands, from the heart of the desert to the heart of man, Skeletons on the Zahara is a spectacular odyssey through the extremes and a gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.

Marooned in Realtime

Marooned in Realtime PDF Author: Vernor Vinge
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429915129
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Multiple Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge takes readers on a fifty-million-year trip to a future where humanity's fate will be decided in a dangerous game of high-tech survival. In this taut thriller, a Hugo finalist for Best Novel, nobody knows why there are only three hundred humans left alive on the Earth fifty million years from now. Opinion is fiercely divided on whether to settle in and plant the seed of mankind anew, or to continue using high-energy stasis fields, or "bobbles," in venturing into the future. When somebody is murdered, it's obvious someone has a secret he or she is willing to kill to preserve.The murder intensifies the rift between the two factions, threatening the survival of the human race. It's up to 21st century detective Wil Brierson, the only cop left in the world, to find the culprit, a diabolical fiend whose lust for power could cause the utter extinction of man. Filled with excitement and adventure, Vinge's tense SF puzzler will satisfy readers with its sense of wonder and engaging characters, one of whom is a murderer with a unique modus operandi. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Play of Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon

The Play of Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon PDF Author: Bert Coules
Publisher: Heinemann
ISBN: 9780435232931
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. This play is a dramatization of Daniel Keyes's story about a retarded adult who desperately wants to be able to read and write.

Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes PDF Author: William Faulkner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : New Orleans (La.)
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Satirisk roman fra New Orleans

Batavia's Graveyard

Batavia's Graveyard PDF Author: Mike Dash
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 140004510X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of Tulipomania comes Batavia’s Graveyard, the spellbinding true story of mutiny, shipwreck, murder, and survival. It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company’s flagship, was loaded with a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java. The Batavia was the pride of the Company’s fleet, a tangible symbol of the world’s richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. She set sail with great fanfare, but the Batavia and her gold would never reach Java, for the Company had also sent along a new employee, Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a bankrupt and disgraced man who possessed disarming charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, Jeronimus soon sparked a mutiny that seemed certain to succeed—but for one unplanned event: In the dark morning hours of June 3, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. The commander of the ship and the skipper evaded the mutineers by escaping in a tiny lifeboat and setting a course for Java—some 1,800 miles north—to summon help. Nearly all of the passengers survived the wreck and found themselves trapped on a bleak coral island without water, food, or shelter. Leaderless, unarmed, and unaware of Jeronimus’s treachery, they were at the mercy of the mutineers. Jeronimus took control almost immediately, preaching his own twisted version of heresy he’d learned in Holland’s secret Anabaptist societies. More than 100 people died at his command in the months that followed. Before long, an all-out war erupted between the mutineers and a small group of soldiers led by Wiebbe Hayes, the one man brave enough to challenge Jeronimus’s band of butchers. Unluckily for the mutineers, the Batavia’s commander had raised the alarm in Java, and at the height of the violence the Company’s gunboats sailed over the horizon. Jeronimus and his mutineers would meet an end almost as gruesome as that of the innocents whose blood had run on the small island they called Batavia’s Graveyard. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, Batavia’s Graveyard is the next classic of narrative nonfiction, the book that secures Mike Dash’s place as one of the finest writers of the genre.

Grand Adventures

Grand Adventures PDF Author: Alastair Humphreys
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008131945
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 559

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Book Description
‘Enthusiastic, pleasingly madcap’ Geographical Adventure – something that’s new and exhilarating, outside your comfort zone. Adventures change you and how you see the world, and all you need is an open mind, bags of enthusiasm and boundless curiosity. Recommended for viewing on a colour tablet.

Into the Wild

Into the Wild PDF Author: Jon Krakauer
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307476863
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die. "It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order." —Entertainment Weekly McCandess had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Not long after, he was dead. Into the Wild is the mesmerizing, heartbreaking tale of an enigmatic young man who goes missing in the wild and whose story captured the world’s attention. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding—and not an ounce of sentimentality. Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.