Lecture Date: January 20, 2015
In his lecture, Dugard will discuss the seven vital traits that history’s most legendary explorers called upon to see their impossible journeys through to the end. In his words, “We are all explorers, and these traits have a most practical application in everyday life. Just like the explorers, life will present us with great unknowns. As professionals we will attempt to chart paths that have never been mapped. And however modest our lives may appear on the outside, there will be times requiring the same deep moral decisions and complex tactical judgments explorers faced in strange lands, thousands of miles from home. The Explorers is a book about survival and courage. It is also a book about stepping into the darkness with confidence and grace, aware on some profound level that the Promised Land we are searching for is not some lost corner of the world, but a place within ourselves.”
Speaker: Martin Dugard
Martin Dugard specializes in chronicling the history of adventure. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, his most recent book is The Explorers (Simon and Schuster, 2013), which probes into the causes of success and failure of all great undertakings. Mr. Dugard is also the co-author (along with Fox news host Bill O’Reilly) of the multi-million selling Killing series. An adventurer himself, Dugard regularly immerses himself in his research to understand characters and their motivations better. To better understand Columbus he traveled through Spain, the Caribbean and Central America. He followed Henry Morton Stanley’s path across Tanzania while researching Into Africa (managing to get thrown into an African prison in the process) and swam in the tiger shark-infested waters of Hawaii’s Kealakekua Bay to recreate Captain James Cook’s death for Farther Than Any Man. On the more personal side of adventure, Dugard competed in the Raid Gauloises endurance race three times, and flew around the world at twice the speed of sound aboard an Air France Concorde. The time of 31 hours and 28 minutes set a world record for global circumnavigation. Dugard’s magazine writing has appeared in Esquire, Outside, Sports Illustrated, and GQ, among others.