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Title: The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0-394-72625-1 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 February, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.63 (60 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: This was one of my college textbooks.
Comment: I was very lucky to have Daniel Boorstin's "The Discoverers" assigned as a textbook for an undergraduate class I took back in the spring of 1988 on European Expansion and Colonization from 1450-1750. Ordinarily, history textbooks are a bit dry. I enjoyed reading them enough to end up only one class short of a double major in History, but this one stood out head and shoulders above the rest.
For a change, the text completely held my attention. Instead of only reading the assigned portions, I read the entire book. Upon discussing this with my classmates, I learned that each of them had done the same.
Perhaps my memory is tainted because this was an overall fun class where we studied actual sailable scale models of caravels built using the actual techniques of the time. But, I recently finished re-reading the book and it was just as much fun the eighth or ninth time around. I've read it so many times that I've lost count.
The two sections that I've always found riveting are the discovery of longitude and Captain Cook muddling around Antarctica. This book is just wonderful. I only wish that the sequel, "The Creators", was just as good. I found that one to be a bit rambling.
Rating: 4
Summary: Wow, the stuff you never learned in school
Comment: I liked this work a little bit better than the Creators, even though I am an artist and reader, I guess it's the calling of the sea, the forests, the mountains.
Just imagine being alive when people had no idea that the Pacific ocean existed or believing that nobody could live below the Equator, such "Anti-Pods" couldn't be real...
This work, like the former, really got me excited about history in general and lead me to read other works, say like "Longitude".
It's one weakness is that it often times reads like a textbook, but it's easy enough to skip parts that are of no interest and get to stuff that moves you.
I imagined many great movies being made from some of these stories, I hope Hollywood script writers find this book and give us some real interesting historical flicks.
My favorite story? The guy that finds the lost city of Troy, wow, what a great and inspirational bit of history.
If you're interested in ships, maps, the discovery of lands, oceans, lost cities and new worlds, you'll enjoy this work, highly recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the great big history books.
Comment: Being a fan of history I can be very thankful to my friend for recommending this book for me. Here in 650 compact pages is basically the entire history of discovery. From the invention of time to the innovations in agriculture; from voyages of the Europeans to 'new worlds' to the fifteenth century Chinese voyages to Africa; from the discoveries of the mind and anatomy to the discoveries of political and economic thought (Adam Smith, Karl Marx, etc.) It is all in this book.
Boorstin uses an exhaustive collection of research to tell the stories of discovery in a very lucid, almost novel-like, style that proves engaging to the very last page. His tellings of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci and Captain Cook are some of the best parts. But with this being the seventieth review of this book, I doubt there is much more I can offer in summary that has not already been alluded to; but there is one bit of insight I would like to point out.
This book is apolitical. The one-hundred or so pages dedicated to the voyages of discovery conducted by Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries are told purely from a standpoint of facts and discoveries. For example: the innovations in map making; new sailing techniques; and the overall impact on social thinking in Europe. Readers looking for any input on the effects of discovery on the native populations of America and elsewhere will have to in turn look elsewhere. The same thinking applies to new political thoughts such as the French Revolution and Marxism: just the facts and the reasons. It is a fun to read factual primer. Read it with that in mind and it is one of the best books on history in recent memory.
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Title: The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0679743758 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 September, 1993 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Seekers : The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0375704752 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0394705130 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 March, 1964 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Americans: The Democratic Experience by DANIEL J. BOORSTIN ISBN: 0394710118 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 July, 1974 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Hidden History : Exploring Our Secret Past by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0679722238 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 May, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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