You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
From the age of five, Alexandra David-Neél longed for adventure and freedom from the societal expectations of women in nineteenth-century Europe.
Women Explorers chronicles the lives of six intrepid women whose hunger for adventure and knowledge compelled them on paths of discovery around the world. Their discoveries not only brought stores of information on topics ranging from ancient dinosaur fossils to life in Tibet, but also challenged the established roles of women in their fields. From the age of five, Alexandra David-Neel longed for adventure and freedom from the societal expectations of women in nineteenth-century Europe. She traveled to Asia where she learned about Eastern religions and cultures and became the first non-Asian woman to enter the forbidden Tibetan city of Lhasa.
Alexandra David-Neel was a writer, explorer and traveler, pioneer feminist and authority on Tibetan Buddhist trantric rites. Born in Paris in 1868, she led a life marked by adventure and fame. She is especially celebrated for her journey, at age 54, through bandit-filled forests in the dead of winter to Lhasa, Tibet.
None
None
Includes entries for maps and atlases.
This unique biography explores the inner journey of a woman whose outer life was a thrilling story of passion and adventure. Alexandra David-Neel (1868–1969), born in Paris to a socially prominent family, once boasted, "I learned to run before I could walk!" In the course of a lifetime of more than one hundred years, she was an acclaimed operatic soprano, a political anarchist, a religious reformer, an intrepid explorer who traveled in Tibet for fourteen years, a scholar of Buddhism, and the author of more than forty books. But perhaps the most intriguing of all her adventures was the spiritual search that led her from a youthful interest in socialism and Freemasonry to the teachings of the great sages of India and culminated in her initiation into the secret tantric practices of Tibetan Buddhism. This book reveals the penetrating insight and courage of a woman who surmounted physical, intellectual, and social barriers to pursue her spiritual quest.