Round About the Earth, Joyce E. Chaplin
Round About the Earth, Joyce E. Chaplin
List: $24.49 | Sale: $17.14
Club: $12.24

Round About the Earth
Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit

Author: Joyce E. Chaplin

Narrator: Joyce Bean

Unabridged: 19 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/11/2013

Categories: Nonfiction, History, Science


Synopsis

For almost five hundred years, human beings have been finding ways to
circle the Earth—by sail, steam, or liquid fuel; by cycling, driving,
flying, going into orbit, even by using their own bodily power. The
story begins with the first centuries of circumnavigation, when few
survived the attempt: in 1519, Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with five
ships and two hundred and seventy men, but only one ship and thirty-five men returned, not
including Magellan, who died in the Philippines. Starting with these
dangerous voyages, Joyce Chaplin takes us on a trip of our own as we
travel with Francis Drake, William Dampier, Louis-Antoine de
Bougainville, and James Cook. Eventually sea travel grew much
safer and passengers came on board. The most famous was Charles Darwin,
but some intrepid women became circumnavigators too—a Lady Brassey, for
example. Circumnavigation became a fad, as captured in Jules Verne's
classic novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Once
continental railroads were built, circumnavigators could traverse sea
and land. Newspapers sponsored racing contests, and people sought ways
to distinguish themselves—by bicycling around the world, for instance,
or by sailing solo. Steamships turned round-the-world travel into
a luxurious experience, as with the tours of Thomas Cook & Son.
Famous authors wrote up their adventures, including Mark Twain and Jack
London and Elizabeth Jane Cochrane (better known as Nellie Bly). Finally
humans took to the skies to circle the globe in airplanes. Not much
later, Sputnik, Gagarin, and Glenn pioneered a new kind of
circumnavigation— in orbit. Through it all, the desire to take on
the planet has tested the courage and capacity of the bold men and
women who took up the challenge. Their exploits show us why we think of
the Earth as home. Round About the Earth is itself a thrilling adventure.

About Joyce E. Chaplin

Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of History at Harvard University. She is the author of books including Subject Matter, Benjamin Franklin's Political Arithmetic, An Anxious Pursuit, and The First Scientific American, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Annibel Jenkins Prize of American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Todd on August 05, 2016

Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit is pretty much what the subtitle claims it to be, a recounting of the various trips throughout history around the globe beginning with Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation in 1519 (in which he was killed, but some of his crew......more

Goodreads review by Lynn on September 18, 2020

Entertaining look at humans traveling around the world. It provides a lot of detail of the early travelers. I have always enjoyed the stories but forget them over time not knowing how far it would be and having a reliable port or known place to stop and collect water and food. Later when Europeans h......more

Goodreads review by Roadkill1313 on April 02, 2014

Started out as very informative but degenerated into a "green" rant about mankind destroying the earth. Author seemed to admire most those intrepid individuals who sought to circumnavigate the planet using "non-polluting" forms of propulsion. Pity she never bothered to dig a little deeper to explore......more

Goodreads review by Joe on April 29, 2013

I have always been fascinated with circumnavigation, due in part to an early and enduring appetite for nautical exploration tales in general and Captain James Cook's career in particular. Imprecise maps, unknown shores, intrepid commanders. Not just straight history but fictional and quasi-fictional......more

Goodreads review by Fraser on June 18, 2019

2.5. This starts well with accounts of Magellan more or less stumbling into an around the world journey (he didn't realize how much ocean he'd have to cross), then follows Drake, Cook and other adventurer-explorers then moves into the ages where going around the world was fairly routine, if you had......more