<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Tremendous blend of history, biography, maps and photos
Review: I'm amazed this book hasn't been reviewed yet. This is a big beautiful book. I guess you could say its kind of a coffee table book. Explorations of practically every area of the globe and practically every era of human exploration are discussed in encyclopedic 2 page chapters. Rather than provide exhaustive chapters about a few explorers or famous explorations, the authors concentrate on a more introductory cover-all-the-bases approach. Famous explorers are given brief biographies and the explorations and their results are described in mostly highlights. The strength of the Atlas lies in the route maps and the dozens and dozens of pictures, portraits, paintings and reproductions of famous and timely documents. The authors convey a very evocative sense of the dangers and difficulties inherent in the slow, dangerous, agonizing and usually fruitless process of exploration. One gets a sense of the brave, brilliant, reckless and, sometimes, quite simply mad men and women who opened up parts of the world. For me, the most interesting sections were the Africa and two New World sections. The Africa sections detail the powerful allure of the exotic and potential riches. The explorers of Africa were lured deep into the interior by whispers of fortune and glory. The moment European explorers had a toehold in Africa, the gov'ts stepped in and took over and colonized the whole continent. A terrible and inevitable human trajedy. The "discovery" of the New World and its inevitable takeover by European powers is seen through the eyes of Columbus, Magellan, Cortes, Pizarro, Darwin, Raleigh, Leif Eiriksson, de Soto, Hudson, Lewis and Clark, La Salle, Cook, Fremont and many others. I highly recommend this reference volume.
<< 1 >>
|
