Provides twenty-two step-by-step projects to help readers learn about the explorers that discovered America and their voyages.

"The Book of Exploration is a chronological tour of the history of exploration by an expert in the field and prolific world traveller, from the pioneering excursions of the ancient Egyptians to the first surface-based crossings of the top and bottom of the world." "Before the turn of the nineteenth century, ventures into uncharted lands required material or spiritual reward to justify the perils of shipwreck, hostile natives, and dangers yet unknown. Until recent times, exploration for the sake of knowledge alone was rare; it was mostly undertaken by intrepid traders, gold. seekers, and valiant Christian missionaries. The Book of Exploration presents more than 150 of the most influential and unusual journeys of discovery, setting each firmly in its historical context. Roy Howgego introduces heroic adventurers battling the elements and committing their findings to journals and maps, pioneers who risked everything in search of fabled riches, and explorers determined to conquer the deserts, poles, and oceans of the globe." "Organized chronologically, beautifully illustrated with contemporary maps, paintings, journal entries, and other artifacts, The Book of Exploration is a feast for the eye and an unparalleled resource." --Book Jacket.

Examines the voyages of Christopher Columbus and their impact on world history.

This two-volume set documents the essential role of the sea and maritime activity across history, from travel and food production to commerce and conquest. In all eras, water transport has served as the cheapest and most efficient means of moving cargo and people over any significant distance. Only relatively recently have railroads and aircraft provided an alternative. Most of the world's bulk goods continue to travel primarily by ship over water. Even today, 95 percent of the cargo that enters and leaves the United States does so by ship. Similarly, people around the world rely on the sea for food, and in recent years, the sea has become an important source of oil and other resources, with the longterm effects of our continuing efforts to extract resources from the sea further highlighting environmental concerns that range from pollution to the exhaustion of fish stocks. This chronologically organized two-volume reference addresses the history of the sea, beginning with ancient civilizations (4000 to 1000 BCE) and ending with the modern era (1945 to the present day). Each of the eight chapters is further broken down into sections that focus on specific nations or regions, offering detailed descriptions of that area of the world and shorter entries on specific topics, individuals, and events. The book spans maritime history, covering major seafaring peoples and nations; famous explorers, travelers, and commanders; events, battles, and wars; key technologies, including famous ships; important processes and ongoing events, such as piracy and the slave trade; and more. Readers will benefit from dozens of primary source documents—ranging from ancient Egyptian tales of seafaring to texts by renowned travelers like Marco Polo, Zheng He, and Ibn Battuta—that provide firsthand accounts from the age of discovery as well as accounts of battle from World War I and II and more modern accounts of the sea.

Winner of the Modern Language Association’s Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Winner of the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Award Winner of NAISA's Best Subsequent Book Award Winner of the Western History Association's John C. Ewers Award Finalist for the John Hope Franklin Prize What if we saw indigenous people as the active agents of global exploration rather than as the passive objects of that exploration? What if, instead of conceiving of global exploration as an enterprise just of European men such as Columbus or Cook or Magellan, we thought of it as an enterprise of the people they “discovered”? What could such a new perspective reveal about geographical understanding and its place in struggles over power in the context of colonialism? The World and All the Things upon It addresses these questions by tracing how Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian people) explored the outside world and generated their own understandings of it in the century after James Cook’s arrival in 1778. Writing with verve, David A. Chang draws on the compelling words of long-ignored Hawaiian-language sources—stories, songs, chants, and political prose—to demonstrate how Native Hawaiian people worked to influence their metaphorical “place in the world.” We meet, for example, Ka?iana, a Hawaiian chief who took an English captain as his lover and, while sailing throughout the Pacific, considered how Chinese, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans might shape relations with Westerners to their own advantage. Chang’s book is unique in examining travel, sexuality, spirituality, print culture, gender, labor, education, and race to shed light on how constructions of global geography became a site through which Hawaiians, as well as their would-be colonizers, perceived and contested imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism. Rarely have historians asked how non-Western people imagined and even forged their own geographies of their colonizers and the broader world. This book takes up that task. It emphasizes, moreover, that there is no better way to understand the process and meaning of global exploration than by looking out from the shores of a place, such as Hawai?i, that was allegedly the object, and not the agent, of exploration.

Charts the adventures of great sea explorers.

Interesting topics Include: Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales; Chinese porcelain; The crusades; The hajj; Medieval monsters; The Norse sagas; The search for spices; Sir John Mandeville's Travels.