Penguin Books Australia

An epic visual guide to the most intrepid explorers in history

Written in association with the RGS, Explorers brings you stories of great courage, spirit and endurance and opens your eyes to how these expeditions have shaped the course of human history. Set out into the unknown with 80 of the world?s greatest explorers and discover what motivated them to risk everything in pursuit of discovery.

A breathtaking and inspirational exploration of planet Earth

From the fiery mass of the Earth's core to the tip of the highest ice-capped mountain, explore every aspect of our planet in awe-inspiring photographic detail with the Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Earth.

Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals...

Unearth the fascinating processes that have shaped our planet.

How does our planet work? What shapes it? How do people use its resources? Find out inside the First Geography Encyclopedia – the only encyclopedia for this age group that covers the subjects of human geography, physical geography and geology together in one volume.

An epic visual guide to the most intrepid explorers in history

Go on an extraordinary adventure with some of the world's greatest explorers – from Pytheas to Darwin. Written accounts in the explorers' own words, together with beautiful illustrations from their journals, tell the stories of their extraordinary adventures while special maps show the explorers' routes into the unknown.

The good news is much can be done. In this powerful and passionate book, David Lindenmayer...

Scholar, churchman, diplomat and theologian, Gerald of Wales was one of the most fascinating figures of the Middle Ages and The Journey Through Wales describes his eventful tour of the country as a missionary in 1188. In a style reminiscent of a diary, Gerald records the day-to-day events of the mission, alongside lively accounts of local miracles, folklore and religious relics such as Saint Patrick's...

The conservation movement has battled indifference and hostility throughout its history. Government and developers treat Australia as a quarry, and yet the movement has won some great victories and secured the preservation of some...

Renaissance diplomat and part-time spy, William Hakluyt was also England's first serious geographer, gathering together a wealth of accounts about the wide-ranging travels and discoveries of the sixteenth-century English. One of the epics of this great period of expansion, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation describes, in the words of the explorers themselves...

No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed...

The world's scientists agree that to avoid the worst environmental damage we must cut at least 60 per cent of global emissions by 2050. Instead, Australia is on track to Increase emissions by 70 per cent over this period...

Few places in Australia are of such pivotal ecological importance as the tropical rainforests of northeast Queensland. Stunning in their diversity and vigour, they are all that remains of the great Gondwana forests that once covered the continent. As well as a spectacle of great beauty, they tell the story of flowering plant evolution.

Watkin Tench sailed to Australia with the First Fleet in 1788. In his late twenties, a captain of the marines, he was insatiably curious about the new British colony of Australia. In his four years in the country, he wrote two books about the early settlement which were bestsellers in their day. These are A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay (1789) and An Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson...