San Antonio College Library

An illustrated celebration of the mapmakers and mythmakers from the European age of exploration features dozens of maps, paintings, and engravings detailing the European vision of lands beyond the horizon.

"The only book of its kind in any language, Travel in the Ancient World offers a comprehensive review of ancient travel, from the first recorded voyages to Old Kingdom Egypt through Greek and Roman times to the Christian pilgrimages of the fourth century and later. Lionel Casson tells who traveled and why (government business, trade, health, vacationing, tourism). He describes the ships, carts, carriages, and other means of conveyance; roads and waterways;...

Collects top nineteenth-century discovery voyage stories, including those about Fridtjof Nansen's solitary walk to the North Pole, Mary Kingsley's forays into the West African jungle, and Richard Burton's forbidden pilgrimage to Mecca.

"Until recently the theory that people could have traversed large expanses of ocean in prehistoric times was considered pseudoscience. But recent discoveries in places as disparate as Australia, Labrador, Crete, California, and Chile open the possibility that ancient oceans were highways, not barriers, and that ancient people possessed the means and motives to traverse them. In this brief, thought-provoking, but controversial book Alice Kehoe considers...

This is the first full study of one of the most popular and extensive forms of eighteenth-century literature, the voyage narrative. It illustrates the wide variety of published and unpublished material in this field, from self-satisfied official accounts to the little-known narratives of victims of the press-gang. It includes a survey of writings about the Pacific - including Cook's voyages and Bligh and The Bounty; there is a major new study of William...

In 1690, a dramatic account of piracy was published in Mexico City. The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez described the incredible adventures of a poor Spanish American carpenter who was taken captive by British pirates near the Philippines and forced to work for them for two years. After circumnavigating the world, he was freed and managed to return to Mexico, where the Spanish viceroy commissioned the well-known Mexican scholar Carlos de Sigüenza...