Excellent but exhausting
The paperback is bound to be a lot less awkward and unwieldy. But the used copies of the hardbound are dirt cheap. I bought the hardbound.Each of the selections are very short, dramatic and intense. I found it hard to read more than a couple of them at a sitting.Of course the selection is skewed to include a lot of British explorers.The inclusion of a number of anecdotes about the deaths of explorers, usually either by starvation of hostile natives, got tiresome. You really got the feeling you were being sold martyrdom stories, that these guys were martyrs for civilization.But apart from these minor criticisms, this is an outstanding collection and many of the selections make you want to go and find the full versions of the original sources. I did this with respect to Rene Caillie's Timbuctoo journey, for example. Many of the sources are out of print, but they can be found for free in PDF form on Google Books and other archive sites.