NCW Libraries

"Bigfoot is an instantly recognizable figure. Through the decades, this elusive primate has been featured in movies and books, on coffee mugs, beer koozies, car polish, and CBD oil. Which begs the question: what is it about Bigfoot that's caught hold of our imaginations? Journalist and self-diagnosed skeptic John O'Connor is fascinated by Sasquatch. Curious to learn more, he embarks on a quest through the North American wilds in search of Bigfoot,...

The inspiration for the major motion picture "The Lost City of Z," mystic and legendary British explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett spent 10 years wandering the forests and death-filled rivers of Brazil in search of a fabled lost city. Finally, convinced that he had discovered the location, he set out for the last time toward destination "Z" in 1925, never to be heard from again. This thrilling and mysterious account of Fawcett's ten years...

The history of science as it has never been told before: a tale of outsiders and unsung heroes from far beyond the Western canon that most of us are taught. When we think about the origins of modern science we usually begin in Europe. We remember the great minds of Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. But the history of science is not, and has never been, a uniquely European endeavor. Copernicus relied on mathematical...

In the summer of 1212, 30,000 children from towns and villages all over France and Germany left their homes and families and began a crusade. Their aim; to retake Jerusalem, the holiest city in the world, for God and for Christ. They carried crosses and they believed, because the Bible told them so, that they could cross the sea like Moses. The walls of Jerusalem would fall, like Jericho's did for Joshua. It was the age of miracles—anything was...

In 1866, six Frenchmen set out on a dangerous mission to seek a trade route up the Mekong. During the two years that followed, they would journey through more than four thousand miles of unmapped territory, from the tropical heat of the swamps of Vietnam and Cambodia to the bitter cold of the mountain ranges of southwestern China. Their historic expedition is the dramatic subject of River Road to China by world-renowned Southeast Asia expert Milton...

RMS Rhone, just three years old then and the pretty queen of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's fleet, sank in the great St. Narciso hurricane of late October 1867, a devastating category three storm that bored a line east to west atop the Antilles, and ruthlessly thinned the islands' population while it sank some seventy ships in port and local waters. Fleeing from Tortola across Drake Strait and toward open water at full speed, through the backside...

Cradled in the valley of the Arno, its noble architecture fitly supplementing its numerous natural charms, lies the Tuscan city of Florence, the birthplace of immortal Dante, the early home of Michael Angelo, the seat of the Florentine Medici, the scene of Savonarola's triumphs and his tragic end. Fame has come to many sons of Florence, as poets, statesmen, sculptors, painters, travellers; but perhaps none has achieved a distinction so unique, apart,...

In "Exceptions to Their Rule," Rick Sloan invites readers to embark on a journey back to a world dominated by the iron grip of autocrats. From 1420 to 1620, monarchs, popes, and cardinals, driven by greed and lust for power, left a trail of destruction, decimating indigenous cultures across five continents. But amidst the chaos and devastation, two cultures-the Basques and the Wabanaki-emerged as beacons of hope, embodying the ideals of democracy...

In 1857, Captain William Lewis Herndon sacrificed his life trying to save 600 passengers and crew when his ship foundered in a hurricane off the Carolina coast. Memorialized in Gary Kinder's bestselling book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, Herndon, with this final courageous act, epitomized a lifetime of heroism. Seven years earlier, the secretary of the Navy had appointed Herndon to lead the first American expedition into the Amazon Valley. Herndon...

Hundreds of islands that once appeared on nautical charts and general atlases are now known to have vanished-or never even existed. How were they detected in the first place? Henry Stommel, an oceanographer and senior scientist at Massachusetts' Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, chronicles his fascinating research in documenting the false discoveries of these phantom islands. British and American Hydrographic Offices compiled lists for navigators...