Ray Howgego
The Book of Exploration
290 x 250mm, 360pp, Hardcover with colour dust jacket
Book of the Month October 2009
Australian: $85 (Approx. US $77, Euro €59)
ISBN 9780297855385
About the Book
This wonderful and well-illustrated new work by Ray Howgego takes a rather different approach to the Encyclopedia of Exploration that we recently published. With lengthy illustrated articles on individual travellers chosen by Howgego to illustrate the spread of the history of world exploration, it makes a most enjoyable book. Although in a different style and taking a different approach to the Encyclopedia, most users of the larger work will enjoy this more popular approach, and we can heartily recommend it to our customers who should have this title to add to their set. Although The Book of Exploration is published in Europe, copies will be available here from early October 2009 and can be ordered directly from this site. As the publishers note, "Before the turn of the 19th century, ventures into uncharted lands required material or spiritual reward to justify the perils of shipwreck and hostile natives and dangers yet unknown. Until recent times exploration for the sake of knowledge alone was rare and mostly undertaken by intrepid traders, gold seekers and valiant Christian missionaries. In this book the author selects more than 150 of those he considers to be the most influential and unusual journeys of discovery, setting each firmly in its historical context. This book chronicles the personalities and motivations, the conditions that had to be endured and the contribution that exploration has made to our knowledge of the world. It is replete with extraordinary personalities: the heroic adventurers who set out into the unknown, battling against the elements in order to commit their findings to journals and maps".