Non-Fiction Books

Tim Severin's travel narrative describes the people, places, things, he experiences along the route once traveled by Marco Polo.

. Hamish Hamilton, 1st ed, with clipped dustjacket, clean copy, no markings, Professional booksellers since 1981

The Mississippi River has intrigued the footloose for centuries. Here, for the first time in paperback, are briskly told biographies of the chief protagonists in the drama, with Old Man River as the constant and invincible antagonist. From conquistadors to nineteenth-century gentlemen explorers, Severin depicts the disasters and adventures of familiar, but often misunderstood, figures in American history, as well as the chicanery of others, less well known, who used the river for their own purposes. "A first-rate piece of work, rich in period and personality. Severin considers the true elucidators of the river-Joliet, Marquette, La Salle, and Henry de Tonti-plus a smattering of frauds and dilettantes, among whom he includes Lieutenant Zebulon Pike." New Yorker " Traveling side by side with each of his intrepid voyagers, Severin will make every armchair Huck Finn yearn to sign up for the next trip." New York Times Book Review Historian Timothy Severin has made a career of retracing and writing about epic voyages. His myriad adventures include canoeing the Mississippi River from beginning to end, sailing in St. Brendan the Navigator's path across the Atlantic Ocean, and journeying on horseback in Mongolia in search of Gheghis Khan's heritage. He lives in Ireland

A journey in search of the living survivors of Stone Age societies. Vanishing primitive Man explores the history and present circumstances of ten primitive peoples—and along the way, tells the stories of many of civilized man’s most exotic adventures: his first wary, mutually amazing meetings with utterly different cultures. Each chapter combines the accounts of explorers whose records form the basis of our knowledge of a primitive people with the latest insights of modern anthropologists. The culture’s prehistoric origins, physical characteristics, social structure, and situation today are probed and pictured, to reveal rich lives of religion and magic, of great skills and casual bravery. Much of the information was unknown until this decade, much is rare history. Praise for Tim Severin: “Tim Severin is one of the last of the old-style explorers. . . . His deeds speak to us of the purity of achievement in an age where experience has become blunted by comfort and complacency. We watch them, awed.” — The Times “I am a great admirer of Tim Severin’s work. . . . He uniquely combines in himself the gifts of the adventurer, the historian, and the litterateur.” — Jan Morris “Tim Severin’s narrative skills rival those of Scheherazade’s.” — The Oxford Times “An extraordinary explorer.” — The Independent Acclaimed adventure writer and explorer, Tim Severin , was born in 1940 and educated at Tonbridge School and Oxford University. He has made a career of retracing the storied journeys of mythical and historical figures in replica vessels. These experiences have been turned into a body of captivating and illuminating books, including The Brendan Voyage , Tracking Marco Polo and In Search of Genghis Khan . He has received numerous awards for exploration and geographic history, including the Founder’s Medal of England’s Royal Geographic Society and the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. When not travelling, he lives in County Cork, Ireland. Colin M. Turnbull , the anthropologist who is noted for his definitive studies of the pygmies of the Ituri forest and of the Iks of central Africa, has served as consultant for the book and has written the Foreword.

Could an Irish monk in the sixth century really have sailed all the way across the Atlantic in a small open boat, thus beating Columbus to the New World by almost a thousand years? Relying on the medieval text of St. Brendan, award-winning adventure writer Tim Severin painstakingly researched and built a boat identical to the leather curragh that carried Brendan on his epic voyage. He found a centuries-old, family-run tannery to prepare the ox hides in the medieval way; he undertook an exhaustive search for skilled harness makers (the only people who would know how to stitch the three-quarter-inch-thick hides together); he located one of the last pieces of Irish-grown timber tall enough to make the mainmast. But his courage and resourcefulness were truly tested on the open seas, including one heart-pounding episode when he and his crew repaired a dangerous tear in the leather hull by hanging over the side--their heads sometimes submerged under the freezing waves--to restitch the leather. A modern classic in the tradition of Kon-Tiki, The Brendan Voyage seamlessly blends high adventure and historical relevance. It has been translated into twenty-seven languages since its original publication in 1978. With a new Introduction by Malachy McCourt, author of A Monk Swimming

Investigating the historical background of the Arabian Nights voyages of Sinbad, a noted explorer follows the ancient Arab sea routes to the Orient aboard a replica of an early Arabian wooden ship

(Extract)'The little galley crept up the European shore, the crew still rowing easily to save their strength before the next ordeal. I saw the millrace at Bebek point from at least half a mile away. The water was shooting round the corner in a seething mass where a rocky spur thrust out into the current flow. Whirlpools gyrated away from the edge of the race; blobs of foam dipped and spun in the hurrying current. As we drew nearer I called a warning to the crew; 'Thirty yards to go to the race ! ... Twenty .. start building up boat speed !' ... Just in front of me Mark began to say 'Couldn't we stay on this side ? Perhaps get round the point inside the current, and ..' But before he finished his sentence Argo's bow hit the race and I heard his startled gasp. It was like steering failure in a moving car . Argo simply went out of control.'

Nearly 900 years after Duke Godfrey de Bouillon set out on the First Crusade, Tim Severin set out with one woman and two horses to retrace his steps. Starting out from Chateau Bouillon in Belgium with the same breed of Ardennes Heavy Horse used by Duke Godfrey, Severin followed the historic trail for eight-and-a-half months. Riding out of the green countryside of northern Europe into the heat and parched landscape of the Near East, he and his companion covered more than 2,500 miles, past ruined Crusader settlements and ancient battlefields, through arduous mountain passes and across barren Anatolian steppes. Across Germany, Austria, Hungary, (then) Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria, he followed the precise route of the medieval voyagers towards their common destination - Jerusalem. In this synthesis of adventure, practical history and exploration, Severin assesses just how far Duke Godfrey could have travelled each day; which routes the Crusaders would have taken and how they would have cared for themselves and their horses.

Following the collapse of nearly seventy years of Communist rule, veteran writer and traveler Tim Severin went to Mongolia "to see how much of the tradtional way of life survived." He discovered a country in an uncertain state of transition and struggling with its newfound identity. Part travelogue and part historical recreation of the legendary journey of the barbaric Mongol warrior Genghis Khan, Severin employs his trademark wit and insight to offer a rare glimpse of a region seldom seen by Westerners and attempts to retrace the great Khan's westward sweep of conquest.

The China Voyage is the extraordinary story of how Tim Severin and his crew made maritime history by sailing across the Pacific on a bamboo raft. Their purpose: to test the theory that Asian mariners reached America some 2,000 years ago. Their experience provides armchair explorers with one of the most remarkable sea voyages ever, and offers a unique perspective on what happens when historical theories are literally put to the test.

This remarkable account of Tim Severin's voyage to the Indonesian Archipelago in search of the island paradise that naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had explored 140 years before him offers both the thrills of exotic adventure and the marvels of scientific discovery. In a replica of the boat that Wallace himself sailed to the Spice Islands and with Wallace's The Malay Archipelago as his guide, Severin travels to remote shores that still harbor such rare but fast-disappearing creatures as red birds of paradise, flying foxes, and bird-winged butterflies. Not only does he discover the now-endangered flora and fauna that Wallace recorded in his expeditions, he also pays due homage to his intrepid predecessor, the man who provided Darwin with the ideas and principles that changed forever the way we view nature and with him co-authored the theory of evolution.

For nearly three centuries, Robinson Crusoe has been the archetypal castaway, the symbol of survival in uninhabited wilds. In this book, Tim Severin adds this enterprising hero to the roster of legendary figures whose adventures he's replicated and whose origins he's explored. With the signature approach to literary and historical sleuthing that has led the New York Times to describe him as "original, audacious, and exuberant," Severin uncovers the seaman's world that captured Daniel Defoe's imagination, recounting dramatic survival stories of sailors, pirates, castaways, and native Americans and replicating their journeys to experience for himself the adventures that inspired Robinson Crusoe. He camps on islands that famous castaways once survived on, undertakes a perilous sea voyage, and searches Nicaragua and Honduras for the Miskutu Indians, the tribe that the model for Crusoe's companion, Friday, belonged to. Tim Severin has once again demonstrated a superb ability to bring t

Herman Melville's classic novel Moby-Dick immortalized the idea of a mammoth sperm whale roaming the seas, wreaking havoc on all that crossed its path. But could such a creature actually exist, then or now? To find out, the acclaimed adventure writer and explorer Tim Severin set off to the islands of the South Pacific in search of one of our most iconic modern myths. From the Marquesas Archipelago, where the twenty-one-year-old Melville deserted his whaling ship in 1842, through the Philippines, Tonga, and Indonesia, Severin follows a trail of ocean legend and lore to the last surviving islanders who hunt the great whale by hand, shadowing a victorious hunt from Stone Age boats and uncovering tantalizing evidence of the existence of a Great White Whale. In this captivating account of his voyage, Severin traces not only the origins of Melville's legendary literary creation but also something of the spiritual relationship between the islanders and the creatures of the sea, the hunter and his prey.

The deeds of early explorers in Africa are some of the most adventurous and heroic exploits in human history. With wild animals, geographical hazards and widespread disease to contend with, it was a risky game. Such an exploration begins with African figures including Mansa Musa and the legendary Prester John, whose rich kingdom was penetrated by the Portuguese in the early 1500s. Later we meet Mungo Park, Ledyard, the American, James Bruce and René Caillié, the humble baker’s son who discovered Timbuktu, all of whom journeyed inland to avoid the Barbary coastal traders. Speke, Grant, Burton, Stanley, Livingstone, and Baker – the resourceful but feuding ‘Victorian lions’ – conclude the age of exploration, competing to unveil and evangelize Central Africa and find the source of the Nile. Skilfully matching four hundred years of history with perceptive assessments of the leading European players on the African stage, Tim Severin offers an engrossing chronicle that will take its place alongside the most distinguished writings in the field of travel and exploration. Tim Severin , author of Explorers of the Mississippi and The Golden Antilles , was educated at Oxford. He has collaborated on BBC TV programs on exploration and is a regular reviewer for the Washington Post . Born in India, he has travelled extensively throughout the world to research his books.