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Presenting the subject on a truly global scale, historian Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, laid down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. From the maritime expeditions connecting Queen Hatshepsut's Egypt to the exotic land of Punt in the second millennium BCE, through the merchants and missionaries of the ancient Silk Roads and the great Iberian explorers of the fifteenth century, to the nineteenth-century explorations of the polar regions, interior Africa, North America, and the South Pacific, Fernández-Armesto spins a narrative full of character and story. Embedding these explorations in the cultures, politics, and technologies of their times, he creates a history with depth and breadth.--From publisher description.… (more)
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On the whole I enjoyed this book even though the author couldn't spend too many pages on any one story but had to move on to the next. Otherwise there would have been many volumes rather that just the one. The only part where I got a bit bogged down was a section about a third of the way in and I think that only happened because of recent reads in the time period which made it seem like a summary of those other books. As an overview of human history it was very good and I liked his approach.