The chapters are divided under three headings, The Explorers, The Treasure Hunters and The Boundaries Pushers. Each is, indeed, adventurous.
Chosen are five trips apiece from the two television series. There's a wide variety, although, unsurprisingly, all but two are from the South Island. And one of those exceptions, Kelly Tarlton's search for ship-wrecked silver and gold, is north of New Zealand at Three Kings Island.
Parochially, William Grave and Arthur Talbot's hunt for a land route to Milford Sound interested me most, and I've often marvelled at the fortitude of Alphonse Barrington (1864), also featured. He spent months lost and starving in the rugged back blocks beyond Glenorchy.
It is the way modern television, and in this case the book, that the presenters must come across with boundless enthusiasm.
They become the programme, the prime actors.
Add in spectacular ventures, and plenty of breathless hype seems to be mandatory - just think Man versus Wild.
Somehow, though, it is hard to imagine the re-enactments really are ''death-defying'' when you know camera crews and helicopters are in the background.
Nevertheless, Kevin Biggar and Jamie Fitzgerald are genuine adventurers. Apparently, too, all their joking around is for real. They are friends and colleagues out to have fun.
Personally, I prefer to learn about, or be reminded of, the basic tales without the embellishments.
And I appreciated the maps and context photographs.
But personalising the trials and tribulations of contemporary ''daredevils'' seems to be the way such matters are promoted into prime-time television and into books.
This helps attract a wider audience to the truly extraordinary original adventures.
