Reviews for Voyages of Discovery: A Visual Celebration of Ten of the Greatest Natural History Expeditions

The average rating for Voyages of Discovery: A Visual Celebration of Ten of the Greatest Natural History Expeditions based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-03-09 00:00:00 Edward Quiroga This is another one of the books I grabbed when I was in London's Natural History Museum and though it's quite heavy and not exactly small, I don't regret it in the slightest. In 10 chapters it tells of journeys around the world that became significant to the scientific community. We thus go to Jamaica, Ceylon, Surinam (this one was especially interesting because the journey was undertaken by a woman), cross the Pacific with James Cook, return to the South Sea with him in the following chapter, chart Australia, sail on board the Beagle, accompany Alfred Russel Wallace to Amazonie and experience the Challenger Expedition to the depths of the ocean - exploring about 3 centuries of natural history (from the 1600s to the late 1800s). The book is interspersed with the respective naturalist's sketches, drawings and paintings or, in case of the more recent voyages, some photographs even. I preferred the chapters about the really old expeditions and thus also the artwork from way back when, but it was an interesting look at the progression of the field and the travels themselves. It also illustrates the progression of technology helping with exploring our world. The writing style was not as captivating as in other books, sadly, but the topic itself was interesting enough to still make me read through this. And I have to admit that the most important part was the scientists and to see their way of cataloging plants and animals and drawing conclusions from their observations - to say nothing of all of them having apparently been quite talented artists.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-21 00:00:00 Kevin Corbett Brief overviews of (mostly british) exploring with large format drawings of beautiful plants and some animals and maps. Subtitle says it all:" a visual celebration of ten of the greatest natural history expeditions" has some William Bartram in se USA area, Hans Sloane in Jamaica, Maria sibylla merian in Surinam etc. Has a selected biographies, brief bibliography, brief index. All pictures mostly from libraries of natural history museum London