The Discoverers »

An original history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him.

Publishers Weekly

In Boorstin's 1983 bestseller The Discoverers , the achievements of Galileo, Columbus, Darwin, Gutenberg and Freud emerged as upwellings of creativity and courage, ingenious acts of revolt against ingrained habit. This richly illustrated two-volume edition reveals the world as known to the discovers themselves. We see the tools of discovery--Egyptian obelisks, early clocks, Leeuwenhoek's microscope, Mercator's maps, botanical drawings from James Cook's voyages--and glimpse the social, cultural and political background, made concrete in 550 pictures including paintings, sculpture, engravings and architecture. A photograph of 15th-century cast bronze type from Korea underscores an Eastern invention that could have changed the course of printing, perhaps of science and culture. In a feast for the mind and eye, itself a delightful adventure in discovery, Boorstin, librarian of Congress emeritus, profiles--and places in context--scores of innovators who broke with dogma and tradition. (Nov.)

Book One: Time
The Heavenly Empire From Sun Time to Clock Time The Missionary Clock

Book Two: The Earth and the Seas
The Geography of the Imagination Paths to the East Doubling the World The American Surprise Sea Paths to Everywhere

Book Three: Nature
Seeing the Invisible Inside Ourselves Science Goes Public Cataloguing the Whole Creation

Book Four: Society
Widening the Communities of Knowledge Opening the Past Surveying the Present