For more than 600 years, Western civilization has relied on exploration to learn about a wider world and universe. The Great Ages of Discovery details the different eras of Western exploration in terms of its locations, its intellectual contexts, the characteristic moral conflicts that underwrote encounters, and the grand gestures that distill an age into its essence. Historian and MacArthur Fellow Stephen J. Pyne identifies three great ages of discovery in his fascinating new book. The first age of discovery ranged from the early 15th to the early 18th century, sketched out the contours of the globe, aligned with the Renaissance, and had for its grandest expression the circumnavigation of the world ocean. The second age launched in the latter half of the 18th century, spanning into the early 20th century, carrying the Enlightenment along with it, pairing especially with settler societies, and had as its prize achievement the crossing of a continent. The third age began after World War II, and, pivoting from Antarctica, pushed into the deep oceans and interplanetary space. Its grand gesture is Voyager’s passage across the solar system. Each age had in common a galvanic rivalry: Spain and Portugal in the first age, Britain and France—followed by others—in the second, and the USSR and USA in the third. With a deep and passionate knowledge of the history of Western exploration, Pyne takes us on a journey across hundreds of years of geographic trekking. The Great Ages of Discovery is an interpretive companion to what became Western civilization’s quest narrative, with the triumphs and tragedies that grand journey brought, the legacies of which are still very much with us.

The present is a contest between the bright and dark sides of discovery. To avoid being torn apart by its stresses, we need to recognize the fact—and gain courage and wisdom from the past. Age of Discovery shows how. Now is the best moment in history to be alive, but we have never felt more anxious or divided. Human health, aggregate wealth and education are flourishing. Scientific discovery is racing forward. But the same global flows of trade, capital, people and ideas that make gains possible for some people deliver big losses to others—and make us all more vulnerable to one another. Business and science are working giant revolutions upon our societies, but our politics and institutions evolve at a much slower pace. That’s why, in a moment when everyone ought to be celebrating giant global gains, many of us are righteously angry at being left out and stressed about where we’re headed. To make sense of present shocks, we need to step back and recognize: we’ve been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, likewise redrew all maps of the world, democratized communication and sparked a flourishing of creative achievement. But their world also grappled with the same dark side of rapid change: social division, political extremism, insecurity, pandemics and other unintended consequences of discovery. Now is the second Renaissance. We can still flourish—if we learn from the first.

Despite earlier naval expeditions undertaken for reasons of diplomacy or trade, it wasn't until the early 1400s that European maritime explorers established sea routes through most of the globe's inhabited regions, uniting a divided earth into a single system of navigation. From the early Portuguese and Spanish quests for gold and glory, to later scientific explorations of land and culture, this new understanding of the world's geography created global trade, built empires, defined taste and alliances of power, and began the journey toward the cultural, political, and economic globalization in which we live today. Ronald Love's engaging narrative chapters guide the reader from Marco Polo's exploration of the Mongol empire to Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe, the search for a Northern Passage, Henry Hudson's voyage to Greenland, the discovery of Tahiti, the perils of scurvy, mutiny, and warring empires, and the eventual extension of Western influence into almost every corner of the globe. Biographies and primary documents round out the work.

The third volume of North American Exploration, covering 1784 to 1914, charts a dramatic shift in the purpose, priorities, and results of the exploration of North America. As the nineteenth century opened, exploration was still fostered by the growth of empire, but by the 1830s commercial interests came to drive most exploratory ventures, particularly through the fur trade. By midcentury, however, as imperial rivalries lessened and the fur trade declined, exploration was driven by the growing scientific spirit of the age?although the science was often conducted in the service of a search for railroad routes or natural resources linked to military concerns. A clear transition took place as the spirit of the Enlightenment gave way to economic imperatives and to the science of the post-Darwinian age and exploration passed beyond discovery and geographical definition. This volume explores the resultant beginnings of an understanding of the continent and its native peoples.

Contains excerpts from treaty between China and Japan.