Review by Choice Magazine USA

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All collections.

Note: Choice Magazine wrongly quoted price at US$295. The book is in fact priced Australian $295 or about US$200.

Howgego, Raymond John. Encyclopedia of exploration to 1800: a comprehensive reference guide to the history and literature of exploration, travel and colonization from the earliest times to the year 1800. Hordern House, 77 Victoria Street, Potts Point NSW 2011, Australia, 2003. 1, 168p indexes ISBN 1-875567-36-4, $295.00

No subject encyclopedia on the history of discovery and exploration is comparable to this work. With 2,327 entries and nearly 20,000 bibliographic citations, it is a tour de force of descriptive, biographic, and bibliographic documentation. Howgego thoroughly documents both well-known and less familiar explorers. Entries are arranged alphabetically, primarily by explorer name, and articles and bibliographies on thematic issues are scattered throughout the work; for example, the article "Haiti, the French in St-Domingue" follows "Hagenaer, Hendrick".

Occasionally, bibliographies follow prominent explorers of a region; for example, the entry "Supplementary Bibliography of French Louisiana" follows the entry for "Le Moyne D'Iberville, Pierre". Although the work has indexes of persons and ships and each entry has dates and place names, there are no good chronological or geographical access points. A table of contents listing each of the separate thematic articles and bibliographies would be useful. Handsomely bound with three bookmark ribbons, the book's physical appearance is consistent with its rich content. For novices and advanced researchers alike.

S.R. McEathron, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign