Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The desire for knowledge, resources, and fame as well as a sense of duty and adventurousness have driven intrepid explorers away from their homes and into the unknown since the time of the first people. Human beings are naturally curious and their ability to imagine what lies just beyond the horizon has helped them populate the globe, driven their technological advancements, and allowed them to discover new ways of surviving in even the most inhospitable of environments. Encyclopedia of Exploration is a two-volume reference to the history of human exploration over land, across and under seas, and into space. This must-have set-a fascinating, comprehensive reference covering core topics in the school curriculum for world history and geography-details various aspects of exploration, many great expeditions, and numerous explorers. Bridging the curiosity of today's students and general readers with the experiences of explorers of the past, the encyclopedia provides easy access to a wide range of important and interesting information. Volume I: The Explorers is a "who was who" of world explorers, while Volume II: Places, Technologies, and Cultural Trends covers other significant aspects of the history of exploration. The thematic organization of the volumes allows readers to access biographical profiles of important explorers in one volume, while referring to the second volume for entries on topics such as cartography, circumnavigation, navigation, shipbuilding, missionaries, the slave trade, the Vikings, women explorers, and the fur trade. This definitive reference to explorers and exploration features thorough coverage and a wide scope, making it an informative, fascinating resourcesuitable for students, researchers, and general readers. Photographs accompany many entries. Volume I: The Explorers is a revised, updated, and expanded version of Who Was Who in World Exploration, published by Facts On File in 1992. Focusing on the explorers, this volume gives readers a sense of the human drama, the achievements and challenges, that those who go where few or no others have gone before must face. New entries include Jacques-Ives Cousteau; Sir Vivian Fuchs; John Glenn, Jr.; Aleksei Leonov; Annie Peck; Valentina Tereshkova; and many more. Volume II: Places, Technologies, and Cultural Trends is a new work covering the technical, social, cultural, and geographical elements of world exploration. This volume's detailed, A-to-Z entries emphasize the many elements that have often determined the success or failure of a given mission. Entries include Bering Strait, circumnavigation of the world, Dutch East India Company, exploration of the Arctic, equator, fur trade, Himalayas, keelboat, legends and exploration, Mississippi River, Nile River, Northwest Passage, Royal Geographic Society, slave trade, Vikings, and many more. Cross-references across the two volumes help readers connect explorers with places and technologies. The set includes valuable reference material including a chronology of exploration; a further reading list; a subject index categorizing topic entries in the second volume; subject indexes of explorers by sponsoring countries, native lands, or nationality, by year of birth, and by most relevant occupation; and a general index.
Synopsis
Volume 1, The Explorers, presents more than 950 biographical entries that begin with birth and death dates, nationality, occupations, and areas of the world explored, followed by an account of the subject's exploration activities. Among the explorers who are covered are the well known, such as Neil Armstrong, Ferdinand Magellan, and Ernest Shackleton, but also the less familiar, such as Ahmad Ibn Fadlan (fl. 920s), whose record of his diplomatic mission from Baghdad to Russia and eastern Europe is the earliest account of that region in pre-Christian times, and Koncordie Dietrich (1821-91), a German naturalist whose travels through the Australian outback resulted in the largest collection of flora and fauna assembled by a woman. Entries range from two or three paragraphs to four pages in length and are accompanied by 144 illustrations and photographs. Appendixes list explorers by occupation, by region of activity, by nationality or sponsoring country, and in chronological order by birth date.
Volume 2, Places, Technologies, and Cultural Trends, has more than 260 A-Z entries on such topics as Aerial photography, Circumnavigation of the world, Drift ice, Fur trade, Native peoples and exploration, Orinoco River, Virginia Company, and Women explorers. Entries range in length from 2 paragraphs to more than 10 pages and are accompanied by 67 photographs and illustrations and 62 maps. An appendix contains maps by region; by ancient routes in the Mediterranean, Europe, and Asia; by new water routes; and by the interior in Asia, the Americas, the Pacific Ocean and Australia, Africa, the Arctic, and the Antarctic. The volume concludes with a very thorough chronology of exploration, a further reading list for the set, a list of volume 2 entries by subject, and a 35-page cumulative index for both volumes. In both volumes, capital letters are used in the text to designate terms that are also entry headings.