Frank Carlson Library

Gulliver has an itch to travel around the world, but whenever he steps on a ship, bad luck seems to find him. He is shipwrecked, abandoned, marooned, and mutinied against, and each time lands in a strange and curious place. First he discovers the kingdom of the six-inch-tall Lilliputians, then the country of the giant Brobdingnagians, then the island of the academic Laputans, which floats in the sky, and finally the noble realm of the horselike Houyhnhnms....

An adventurous geology professor mounts an expedition that descends into a subterranean world of luminous rocks, antediluvian forests, and fantastic marine life -- a living past that holds the secrets to the origins of human existence.

This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices." Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence. The troubles begin when stewardship of Arrakis is transferred by the Emperor from the...

Voyage of the Beagle chronicles Charles Darwin's five years as a naturalist on board the H.M.S. Beagle. The notes and observations that he recorded in his diary included Chile, Argentina and Galapagos Islands and encompasses the ecology, geology and anthropology of the places he visits. A fascinating travel memoir the ideas that were later to evolve into Darwin's theory of natural selection find their naissance in Voyage of the Beagle.

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"In New York Times bestseller Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb, Chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department, presented a theory that shook the scientific community: our solar system, Loeb claimed, had been visited by a piece of advanced alien technology from a distant star. This provocative and persuasive argument opened thousands of minds to the vast possibilities of our universe and the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. But a crucial question remained:...

Presents the theory that earth has been visited by extraterrestrial beings.

"Amitav Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family-the climax of a yearslong project"-- When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those...

In the annals of seafaring and exploration, there is one name that immediately evokes visions of the open ocean, billowing sails, visiting strange, exotic lands previously uncharted, and civilizations never before encountered-Captain James Cook. This is the true story of a legendary man and explorer. Noted modern-day adventurer Martin Dugard, using James Cook's personal journals, strips away the myths surrounding Cook's life and portrays his tremendous...