The age of reconnaissance Book

The book covers every aspect of exploration: the political and social background, the geographic and sailings, the bureaucracies of colonized areas and biographical sketches of explorers and my favorite, some geopolitical comments as well as the political theories underpinning and those criticizing the conquests. Loved parts II. and III. But Part I. was was a problem. Just like every historian dealing with exploration, he writes as if the reader were an expert sailor. I found myself checking the dictionary and photos for a better understanding far more often than I wanted to. For example, just within a just a pages I came across pintles, ratlines, "ship to tack," "brailing up the sail," bowges, bowlines, bonnets, ketch rig, barque, brig, brigantine, clinker-work, and mizen mast. I don't mind looking things up, but I think more of these terms should have been explained or accompanied by diagrams. I had similar problems with the astronomical terms related to navigation but I have no real excuse for that. I imagine when this book was written, many more educated people could read the skies than in the post GPS world. In any case, from my reading over the years, and regardless of my weak technical vocabulary, I'm pretty sure this is one of the most cited book on the explorations of the period.