Explorers: The Most Exciting Voyages of Discovery -- From the African Expeditions to the Lunar Landing [Hardcover]

Andrea De Porti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2005

A superbly illustrated reference of great explorers and their expeditions since 1845.

One the most exciting periods of exploration coincided with the invention of photography. As a result, the most important expeditions over the last 160 years were captured and preserved by incredibly dramatic photographs.

Explorers is a stunning history of such expeditions, presented chronologically since 1845. It features rare archival photographs, maps, prints, and drawings, reproduced on stunning gatefolds that fold out to up to 40 inches across and up to 22 inches high.

Text includes a short biography of each explorer, the extraordinary stories of their expeditions, and passages from their personal journals. The explorers featured include, among many others, a total of 22:

• Richard Frances Burton and John Hanning Speke: sources of the Nile
• Henry Stanley: looking for Livingstone
• Isabella Bird Bishop: China
• Ernest Shackleton: Antarctica
• Roald Amundsen: the Northwest Passage and the South Pole
• Gertrude Bell: Iraq
• Maria Reiche: Nazca, Peru
• Thor Heyerdahl: Kon-Tiki raft across the Pacific
• Edmund Hillary: atop Mount Everest
• Neil Armstrong: first steps on the Moon.

Explorers is the fascinating and uniquely illustrated history of the explorers and how their expeditions influenced the world we live in today.

(20051001)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.
This photo- and fact-filled book, in which nearly every page is a generously illustrated double gatefold, lands on the table with an undeniable thud and details 58 expeditions from the past 150 years-from Robert Peary and Matthew Henson's trek to the North Pole in 1909 to Edmund Hillary's 1953 climb up Everest (called by Tibetans "the mother goddess of the world") to Neil Armstrong's "one small step" onto the moon in 1969. De Porti, a writer and editor for Charta and art director of Alumina, chose these stories for their "cultural and scientific significance" and combines often-unseen images (readers will find reproductions of pages from travel journals, maps and sketches among the hundreds of archival photos) with explorer biographies and travel narratives. De Porti recounts failed as well as successful expeditions, and it's the former that resonate most, notably the doomed adventure of Robert Falcon Scott, who, after reaching the South Pole, discovered Roald Amundsen had planted the Norwegian flag there barely a month prior. Scott died on the return journey. Though some explorers' intentions were more noble than others (expanding colonial interests played no small role in many expeditions), the creative way these journeys are presented will impress armchair adventurers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* De Porti points out in a preface that when Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in Vostok I in just over 90 minutes in 1961, he was able to travel the same distance as the HMS Challenger in its three-and-a-half-year voyage around the world, which began in 1872. From the middle of the nineteenth century, as the author indicates, there are historical documents, accounts, and reports of expeditions, and photographs, and many of them are extraordinarily evocative images, despite their having been taken with primitive equipment. The story of exploration is a story told in pictures, and this book contains hundreds of rare archival photos, both color and black and white, spread over vertical and horizontal gatefolds. The 53 stories here, De Porti writes, have been selected for their historical and scientific importance and also for their "sheer fascination." Some voyages are well known--those of Charles Lindbergh, Roald Amundsen, Robert Stott, Thor Heyerdahl, and Neil Armstrong. Some explorers are little known--such as Katherine Routledge, who explored the mysterious stone statues and the ancient culture that had erected them on Easter Island; Maria Reiche, who for 40 years studied the ancient archaeological sites of South America; and Vittorio Sella, who photographed the highest peaks, towering cliffs, and glaciers in America, Asia, and Africa. Readers will be fascinated by these journeys. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 174 pages
• Publisher: Firefly Books (September 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1554071011
• ISBN-13: 978-1554071012
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 10.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Coffee Table Dream Book, September 2, 2006

By 

Gordon Hamilton "Gord!" (Calgary) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Explorers: The Most Exciting Voyages of Discovery -- From the African Expeditions to the Lunar Landing (Hardcover)

This is a top quality book - informative, well researched, and studded with historical photography and maps. Each explorer gets a page - about half of them with a large fold-out section.

I have bought 8 to give as gifts. Extraordinary value for money.