William H. Goetzmann (1930–2010)

This is the sort of book I suspect the internet has killed the commercial viability of. And it has a limited appeal.

But, if you like reading about the exploration and settlement of North America (here essentially the southern US border to the North Pole), you’ll probably find something of value in this handsome book.

After a brief prologue covering North American explorers, real and legendary, through Columbus, the book is divided into five main parts which are, with the exception of the show more concluding one, “The Far North”, roughly arranged chronologically then subdivided by area.

The maps are excellently done with dates, routes, and points of interest noted. Most sections are at least two pages long (overall page count is 224) with text and at least one map and often a quote from the journey covered.

There are plenty of people you’ve heard of, many you probably haven’t, and one – Admiral Juan du Fuca – probably fictious.

You can fruitfully read the thing cover to cover, and that’s what I did.

Of particular interest for this blog is the coverage of explorations related to the fur trade and in the Arctic after Robert Peary’s reached (allegedly) the North Pole.

A quite useful reference book. show less

This is a sort of intellectual biography of the United States. It reads very much like the collected lecture notes of an old professor - which of course, it is. I was hoping for a little more in-depth approach, instead of a quick sweeping survey hitting the high points. Ideas and concepts are mentioned but not fully developed.

To me you can see and understand so much more history in a map than long wordy explanations, this is great.

There are some problems with the accompanying dialog, sometimes it does not match the map, or lacks continuity etc. but much of that is likely because of the need of brevity.

The two authors are British and Texan, so the material seems heavy on Spanish and British exploration.

I love history, so I searched diligently for a general or subjected focus that the author was writing for. Then I tried to decide what level or segment of scholarship he was addressing. Determining neither in the first 5th of the book, I skipped to the later chapters and still had a scattered feeling even when I already had knowledge of the subject, so I gave it to the library to sell to someone else.