Scientific Explorers looks at scientific explorations on land, at sea, and in space—Captain James Cook's astronomical observations, the Great U.S. Exploring Expedition of the 1830s, the mapping expeditions and geological surveys of the American West by Fremont and others, and many more exciting and dramatic discoveries—by James Cook, Lewis and Clark, Charles Darwin, Alvin, Jacques Cousteau, and others—that have changed the way we view the world.

The adventures of explorers are some of the most dramatic and exciting stories in history. Most young readers know about the "big names" in exploration—Columbus, Magellan, Da Gama, and so on. But in her new series, Rebecca Stefoff not only offers new perspectives on these old timers, she also exposes her readers to some of the travelers and explorers who do not appear in the traditional history books. Consequently, the books in the series may occasionally wander off the high road of history to follow the fascinating byways of adventure and anecdote as they span all parts of the world in over 2,000 years. The result is a wide-ranging yet coherent picture of geographical discovery, and a knowledge of dozens of extraordinary men and women whose journeys of discovery have reflected and shaped our view of the world. Each book focuses on one extraordinary aspect of exploration. Accidental Explorers looks at explorers who set out to look for one thing but found something else entirely, or who made marvelous discoveries by accident or sheer luck—Jedediah Smith, who pioneered the overland crossing to California, Henry Morton Stanley, the newspaperman who explored central Africa, and others more obscure but no less colorful, such as Chang Ch'ien, a kidnapped Chinese diplomat who involuntarily explored much of Asia in the 2nd century B.C.

Women of the World looks at eight women whose heroic journeys added to the world's geographic Ida Pfeiffer, an 19th century women with "an insatiable desire to travel" who circled the world—twice, Fanny Bullock Workman, the world's foremost woman moutaineer, an early feminist, and one of the most controversial figures in modern geography, and Alexandra David-Neel, the first western woman to enter Lhasa, the Forbidden City of Tibet.