Books like Down the great unknown by Edward Dolnick

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687) was a French explorer in the Great Lakes region who traveled the Mississippi River, claiming the territory for France. Born and raised in France and educated in the Jesuit religious order, he went to Montreal in New France in 1666. On one of his expeditions in the subsequent years he built the first sailing ship on the Great Lakes, Le Griffon. Part of his legacy was a chain of forts from Ontario into present-day Ohio and Illinois that extended French control and the French fur trade into the region of the present Great Lakes states. Author Francis Parkman was one of America’s best-known and most respected historians in the late nineteenth century. He drew on a great depth of expertise about the history of the French in North America for this book, which was long considered a standard history on the topic.

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s first‑hand diary of the 1914‑17 Imperial Trans‑Antarctic Expedition, detailing the Endurance’s crushing by ice, the crew’s nine‑month ordeal on drifting ice, and their daring survival against the polar wilderness.

Caroline Alexander chronicles Ernest Shackleton’s 1914–1917 Imperial Trans‑Antarctic Expedition, blending new primary documents with Frank Hurley’s unpublished photographs to portray the crew’s 20‑month ordeal and heroic survival.

Frank Worsley, captain of Shackleton’s Endurance, narrates the ship’s wrecking in pack ice, the crew’s survival on drifting ice floes, and their daring 800‑mile boat voyage to South Georgia and inland rescue in Antarctica.

Experiences of the Scottish explorer who rediscovered the source of the Nile on November 4, 1770.

In graphic novel format, tells the dramatic story of Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the unmapped American West.

A first‑hand chronicle of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1528‑1536 expedition, detailing shipwreck, survival, and close encounters with Native American peoples across what is now Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.

"The Invention of Science goes back five hundred years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently, but came to intersect and create a new worldview. Here are the brilliant iconoclasts--Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Newton, and many more curious minds from across Europe--whose studies of the natural world challenged centuries of religious orthodoxy and ingrained superstition,"--Amazon.com.