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High adventure and grand history from a master of the craft in a beautifully illustrated volume.
With characteristic flair, Felipe Fernández-Armesto gives us an entertaining and insightful history of world exploration. Presenting the subject for the first time on a truly global scale, Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, lay down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. From the maritime expeditions connecting Queen Hatshepsut's Egypt to the exotic land of Punt in the second millennium BCE, through the merchants and missionaries of the ancient Silk Roads and the great Iberian explorers of the fifteenth century, to the nineteenth-century explorations of the polar regions, interior Africa, North America, and the South Pacific, Fernández-Armesto spins a grand narrative full of character and story. Deftly embedding these explorations in the cultures, politics, and technologies of their times, he creates a history with unusual depth and breadth. Here is an intellectual adventure as rewarding as it is thrilling. 16 pages of color; 48 maps; 44 illustrations.
Review:
"Readers of history will delight in Fernndez-Armesto's latest. The Tufts historian (Millennium) deftly manages the near-impossible task of a comprehensive account of world exploration from the dawn of humankind while maintaining an interesting tone throughout. The evocatively titled chapters ('Reaching,' 'Stirring,' 'Springing') follow a well-organized outline, and short sections keep the reader from feeling overwhelmed with information. Beginning with Homo erectus's migrations from East Africa to the rest of the continent and to Eurasia a million and a half years ago, the book examines how and why cultures spread throughout the world. Each section of the globe is examined, from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Pacific Islands, the Middle East and Africa. Along the way, technological and scientific leaps, such as sails, cartography and the cure for scurvy are explained. Fernndez-Armesto also looks at the important role economics and politics have played in world exploration, The author excels when he narrows the focus, such as when he places Columbus into historical context so that the magnitude of his journey and its difficulty are fully felt. This volume truly covers everything the title claims, resulting in a rich history of our world. 16 pages of color illus., 44 b&w illus., 48 maps." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Academic history today is largely a realm of specialists, but history itself resists the fine-point focus of specialization. The deepest themes demand the grandest scale, an intrepid spirit and a certain boldness. Yet relatively few thickly credentialed historians are willing to take up the broad brushes and vast palette necessary to paint a Big Picture. Fewer still do it with the flair of Felipe... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Fernandez-Armesto, a professor at Tufts University and the prolific author of unabashedly sweeping tomes with titles like 'Civilizations,' 'Food: A History' and 'Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed.' Fernandez-Armesto not only specializes in Big Picture history, he surveys it from a perspective so elevated it rivals that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Quite literally: His book 'Millennium' (1995) examined the past thousand years of human civilization from the hypothetical perspective of Galactic Museum Keepers, gazing down upon us puny mortals. A similar trope opens his new 'Pathfinders.' 'Imagine a cosmic observer, contemplating humankind from immensely remote space and time,' he writes. 'The cosmic observer would surely say that our history was, above all, (an) experience of increasing diversity.' This conceit frames the book's central premise, that the collective experience of humanity can be demarcated into two phases: an initial (and mostly prehistoric) diaspora from our common African roots, followed by an age of rediscovery, 'of how human groups got back in touch, exchanged culture, copied each other's lives, and became more like each other again.' As Fernandez-Armesto puts it, 'Both stories, I contend, are stories of exploration.' This, of course, is tantamount to equating exploration with civilization itself, or at least declaring it an accurate lens through which civilization can be viewed. Surprisingly, there's plenty of weight for such an argument. Soldiers and rulers have, on the whole, defined the world far less than sailors and navigators. A well-executed first contact is, almost inevitably, a form of conquest since it establishes patterns of interactions that later arrivals will be hard put to override. As Fernandez-Armesto points out, this was not lost even on early Indus Valley cultures, which 'throve on long-range contacts. Their outposts were clearly sited with trade in mind — to attract or guard ships and caravans from afar.' With a few exceptions, such as inward-looking China, the fate of nations has been less dependent on defending borders than on making them strategically permeable. Despite its sprawl, 'Pathfinders' never rests on scope alone. The author eagerly seeks out a different kind of terra incognita — that of historical freshness. Noticing that many great voyages were, puzzlingly, begun by sailing against prevailing winds, Fernandez-Armesto concludes that upwind journeys made the venturing slow but ensured a swift return leg after the explorers' supplies ran low. It was 'as important for them to find their way home' as it was 'to discover something new.' This leads to a brisk exegesis on the role of cyclical wind systems, particularly the predictable seasonal monsoons that so thoroughly cross-fertilized the coastal cultures of the Indian Ocean. Fernandez-Armesto offers another fascinating insight — about how often explorers' accounts were wildly inaccurate. The shock of being 'isolated, thousands of miles from home, surrounded by unknown perils, baffled by an unfamiliar environment' regularly led to near-hallucinogenic breaks with reality, he argues. Columbus believed he'd discovered islands populated solely by Amazonian women or bald men. Arriving in India, Vasco da Gama bizarrely believed Hinduism to be a form of Christianity. In 1670, John Lederer, a German physician wandering in the vicinity of present-day North Carolina, claimed 'to have met Indians from California.' A Big Picture historian must also be a skilled miniaturist, sketching out particulars vividly yet swiftly. This is Fernandez-Armesto's most distinctive strength, and he serves up a panoply of characters who are richly and economically drawn. Particularly memorable is the thumbnail of Vitus Bering, the reluctant Siberian explorer, dying in 1742 'from "hunger, thirst, cold, vermin and grief," half-smothered in sand against the unbearable Arctic winter, surrounded by crates full of his court clothes and wigs.' This is clearly a historian in full command of the facts and of language. Fernandez-Armesto's desire to get a fresh take on familiar events sometimes leads him into debatable territory, such as when he calls the captain of the Pinta 'in effect, Columbus' co-commander on the first Atlantic crossing' or, more controversially, speculates that the doomed Robert F. Scott expedition to the South Pole may have been made up of 'virtual suicides, who preferred to die dramatically rather than live in obscurity.' But these are dramatic effects, not historical distortions, and they are further evidence of Fernandez-Armesto's desire to fully engage the reader. For all its daunting scope, 'Pathfinders' is propelled by an Argonaut of an author, indefatigable and daring. It's a wild ride." Reviewed by Jason Roberts, the author of "A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler", Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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In this insightful history of world exploration, Fernandez-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, laid down the routes of contact that drew together the farthest reaches of the world. 16 pp. of color. 48 maps. 44 illustrations.
Product details
428 pages
W. W. Norton & Company -
English9780393062595
Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Readers of history will delight in Fernndez-Armesto's latest. The Tufts historian (Millennium) deftly manages the near-impossible task of a comprehensive account of world exploration from the dawn of humankind while maintaining an interesting tone throughout. The evocatively titled chapters ('Reaching,' 'Stirring,' 'Springing') follow a well-organized outline, and short sections keep the reader from feeling overwhelmed with information. Beginning with Homo erectus's migrations from East Africa to the rest of the continent and to Eurasia a million and a half years ago, the book examines how and why cultures spread throughout the world. Each section of the globe is examined, from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Pacific Islands, the Middle East and Africa. Along the way, technological and scientific leaps, such as sails, cartography and the cure for scurvy are explained. Fernndez-Armesto also looks at the important role economics and politics have played in world exploration, The author excels when he narrows the focus, such as when he places Columbus into historical context so that the magnitude of his journey and its difficulty are fully felt. This volume truly covers everything the title claims, resulting in a rich history of our world. 16 pages of color illus., 44 b&w illus., 48 maps." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
In this insightful history of world exploration, Fernandez-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, laid down the routes of contact that drew together the farthest reaches of the world. 16 pp. of color. 48 maps. 44 illustrations.
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