This fascinating new installment in the popular Lives of . . . series of collective biographies is full of juicy tidbits about history's greatest explorers.

In search of trees : Leif Ericson -- "Only the half of what I saw" : Marco Polo -- Kindness of strangers : Ibn Battuta -- Everyone likes presents : Zheng He -- "Gold is most excellent" : Christopher Columbus -- Flying pigs : Ferdinand Magellan -- The final four years : Henry Hudson -- Eat your sauerkraut : James Cook -- In love with wilderness : Daniel Boone -- Dancing by campfire : Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacajawea -- Thousand and One Nights : Richard Francis Burton -- gun or no gun? : Isabella Bird -- Body parts on the ceiling : Mary Kingsley -- The kind one : Matthew Henson -- Naming a new land after "Mommie" : Richard E. Byrd -- Up and down : Auguste and Jacques Piccard -- Blast off! : Sally Ride.