The Great Ages of Discovery How Western Civilization Learned about a Wider World

"Stephen Pyne charts a new course through the history of exploration, navigating deftly among ruminations, reflections, themes, and concepts. He sees exploration as an intellectual adventure. Readers who accompany him will have a lucid, engaging, and magisterial guide. They can undertake odysseys without leaving their armchairs." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It

"This book is panoramic and monumental, calling to mind the works of J. H. Parry and William H. Goeztmann. Like a gracefully carved triptych, Stephen J. Pyne divides his narrative into three Great Ages of Discovery, each of which corresponds with a major chapter in Western intellectual history: the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism. Always lucid, rich in metaphor, and insightful, Pyne not only shows his mastery of the subject, but he succeeds in conveying the spirit of adventure associated with it as well. The Great Ages of Discovery will revive exploration history." - Kevin J. Fernlund, author of William Henry Holmes and the Rediscovery of the American West

"This is a book to explore and savor, and explore and savor again." - William Sheehan, co-author of Discovering Pluto

"Stephen J. Pyne's inviting interpretation of more than five centuries of exploration demonstrates that there is something new under the Sun. His categorization of three Great Ages of Discovery are uniquely satisfying." - Roger D. Launius, author of Apollo's Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings

"With this introduction to five centuries of history, Stephen Pyne offers a sweeping narrative that charts the coevolution of Western society with exploration, violence, cultural appropriation, and biogeographic upheaval. Pyne offers us a startling vision of discovery's past, from Vasco da Gama to the Voyager space mission, with surprising implications for intellectual life and even contemporary science." - Jacob Darwin Hamblin, author of Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism