The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself

by Daniel J. Boorstin

Overview

An original history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him.  In the compendious history, Boorstin not only traces man's insatiable need to know, but also the obstacles to discovery and the illusion that knowledge can also put in our way. Covering time, the earth and the seas, nature and society, he gathers and analyzes stories of the man's profound quest to understand his world and the cosmos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780394726250
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/12/1985
Series:	Knowledge Series , #2
Pages:	768
Sales rank:	347,920
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Daniel J. Boorstin was the author of The Americans, a trilogy (The Colonial Experience; The National Experience, and The Democratic Experience) that won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1989, he received the National Book Award for lifetime contribution to literature. He was the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and for twelve years served as the Librarian of Congress. He died in 2004.

Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

Cooke

A ravishing book...[with] a verve and audacity and a grasp of every sort of knowledge that is outrageous and wonderful....I can't think of any other living writer who could have attempted let alone accomplished it.

Barbara W. Tuchman

A new and fascinating approach to history...rich in unknowns and surprises.

Editorial Reviews

"Compelling readable. . . . A remarkable narrative of the grand intellectual venture of humankind, rich in fascinating, often dramatic details."—The Wall Street Journal

"A sumptuous, totally engaging panorama. No one who reads it will look at the chronicle of human ingenuity in the same way again." —David McCullough

"Written with great verve . . . [Boorstin's] learning, wit, and lucidity should ensure that he will bring pleasure to a large group of reader."  —The New York Review of Books

"History with a human touch."  —Newsday

"A grand and exhilirating voyage, a bold attempt to circumnavigate the intellectual globe."  —The Philadlephia Inquirer

From the Publisher

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.)

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