The Last Secrets by John Buchan audiobook.

Genre: history

In The Last Secrets (1923), John Buchan turns from spy fiction to the real-world drama of the map's final blank spaces, tracing how early twentieth-century expeditions transformed rumor and legend into surveyed fact. With a storyteller's pace and a geographer's eye, Buchan revisits the great set pieces of a rapidly shrinking world: the long-guarded road to Lhasa, the perilous gorges of the Brahmaputra, the contested dreams of the North and South Poles (with polar chapters contributed by Charles Turley Smith), and the strange equatorial snows of Ruwenzori, the 'Mountains of the Moon.' He ranges on to the high gamble of Mount McKinley, the guarded holy cities of Islam, the hard-won routes through New Guinea's interior, and the early reconnaissance that set the stage for Mount Everest. Across these episodes runs the book's central tension: the irresistible pull of the Unknown versus the bittersweet realization that discovery increasingly means precise measurement, patient logistics, and scientific detail rather than forbidden cities and mythical rivers. The result is both a chronicle of daring journeys and a meditation on why exploration matters when wonder seems to be running out of room.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 00

(00:06:47) Chapter 01

(00:45:44) Chapter 02

(01:02:12) Chapter 03

(01:42:03) Chapter 04

(02:03:09) Chapter 05

(02:33:52) Chapter 06

(03:09:39) Chapter 07

(03:42:43) Chapter 08

(04:24:05) Chapter 09

(05:01:36) Chapter 10

(05:30:37) Chapter 11

(06:00:02) Chapter 12

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