The Best-Ever Book of Exploration

It isn’t the best ever, despite the endorsement from the Royal Geographical Society. It’s a book for the reader who’s attracted to exploration, in the first place at least, as a sphere of adventure: an opportunity to go into unknown and dangerous places that will test skills, courage and endurance. Arranged chronologically, the book is dominated by large dramatic illustrations whose effect is predominantly atmospheric. The text is broken up into two main paragraphs per double page with ‘sidelight’ paragraphs associated with smaller illustrations. This gives an adequate flavour of individual explorers and expeditions, so that if you want some information on Magellan or Columbus, you will find it, but it doesn’t get to grips with the social, environmental and economic implications of exploration. The book does at least deal with exploration as a worldwide phenomenon, including Chinese and Arab explorers. But it is not convincing as a serious approach. The large maps that head each section, tracing the course of several routes at once, are difficult to decipher; sections on mapping and deep sea exploration are added as an afterthought, and space exploration is not considered at all.