The Bottom Line
This book is the perfect gift for a fan of geography, history, mapping, or exploration. It's an exciting multi-media experience that uses amazing maps, beautiful images, reproductions of historic documents, and a gripping narrative to tell the story of exploration.
Pros
- Amazing maps and images illustrate the history of exploration.
- Reproductions of original documents and maps bring history to life.
- A CD of additional maps is included.
- The entire world is covered, not just "western" exploration.
Cons
- The envelopes that include the reproductions may wear out with regular use.
- The number of graphics and maps and pull-outs on a page is distracting.
- For documents not in English, one needs to look in the back of the book for translations.
Description
- Hardcover, 80 pages.
- Includes a CD of 35 archival maps.
- Covers the entire world of exploration, from before Columbus to the polar expeditions of the 20th century.
- In the book are printed and pull-out facsimiles of original documents like maps, treaties, and sketches by explorers.
Guide Review - Exploration Experience: The Heroic Exploits of the World's Greatest Explorers
The National Geographic Society and author Beau Riffenburgh have produced an amazing book. This is so much more than an atlas of exploration or a history of world exploration. It takes the reader around the world with the explorers who opened up every part of the world.
I appreciate the global approach to this book in that is does not simply focus on the exploration of the Americas, it covers the exploration of the entire world. The book includes not only a supplemental CD of maps from the Royal Geographical Society, it also includes facsimiles of original documents like a map of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Each two-page spread features a different explorer or region of the world at a certain time in the history of exploration. Often there is a pull-out facsimile of a map or document related to that person or region. The text for each section is impressively detailed and informative. The design of the book is superb. I can't recommend this book highly enough!
