Under A Lucky Star: A Lifetime of Adventure

Roy Chapman Andrews

• Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9798907971059
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

''Under a Lucky Star: A Lifetime of Adventure'' is the fascinating 1943 autobiography of Roy Chapman Andrews, a world-renowned American naturalist, explorer, and eventual director of the American Museum of Natural History. Andrews achieved massive public popularity during the 1920s and 1930s, and he is widely cited as a principal real-life inspiration for the fictional character Indiana Jones. A major portion of the book covers his legendary Central Asiatic Expeditions, a series of five groundbreaking journeys through uncharted expanses of the Gobi Desert. Using an audacious logistical mix of motor cars supported by camel caravans, his team discovered a massive treasure trove of fossils, including the first recognized fossilized dinosaur eggs. The book tracks his journey from a boy passionate about taxidermy in Wisconsin to starting out as a literal janitor at the American Museum of Natural History just to get his foot in the door. It highlights his early adventures studying whales across the North Pacific, Alaska, and Japan. True to its name, the book delivers high adventure across the Arctic, the South Pacific, China, Korea, and Mongolia, detailing moments where he narrowly escaped death from political unrest, bandits, and extreme environments.

Table of contents

• Under a Lucky Star
• CHAPTER ONE, Adventure Comes Early
• CHAPTER TWO, I Meet a Whale
• CHAPTER THREE, Submarine Courtship
• CHAPTER FOUR, Muscles and Murderers
• CHAPTER FIVE, Yokohama’s Yoshiwara
• CHAPTER SIX, Robinson Crusoe’s Isle
• CHAPTER SEVEN, Typhoon
• CHAPTER EIGHT, Yesterday in Japan
• CHAPTER NINE, Strictly Personal Explorations
• CHAPTER TEN, Korean Devilfish and Killers
• CHAPTER ELEVEN, The Long White Mountain
• CHAPTER TWELVE, A Harem on the Rocks
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN, The Blue Tiger
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN, Yunnan Adventures
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN, Wartime Interlude
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN, Dog Eats Man
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, Wall Street Ramblings
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, My Peking Palace
• CHAPTER NINETEEN, Marching Sands of the Gobi
• CHAPTER TWENTY, The Emperor’s Bride
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE, Where the Dinosaur Laid Her Eggs
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, The Valley of the Jewels
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE, The Great Dinosaur Egg Auction
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, Desert Dune Dwellers
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE, Motoring Through a War
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX, Politics and Palaeontology
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN, Fate Takes a Hand
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT, Dangling in the Depths
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE, A Square Peg in a Round Hole
• CHAPTER THIRTY, Berkshire Paradise