Explorers of the Amazon - Softcover

Smith, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226763374 ISBN 13: 9780226763378

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Synopsis

Explorers of the Amazon vividly describes how European explorers such as Pedro Cabral, Francisco De Orellana, Lope de Aguirre, and Madame Godin encountered the vast wilderness of the Amazon basin; how they searched, exploited, and fought over its riches; and what they learned and failed to learn through four centuries of adventure. Anthony Smith not only enriches this history with fascinating geographical, political, and scientific details but also gives a strong warning to those who continue to exploit this great river's resources.

"The history of Amazonian exploration, wonderfully told by Anthony Smith, is awash with madness—an extravagant mixture of the malevolent and the miraculous."—Stephen Mills, Times Literary Supplement

About this title

From Library Journal:

This is less a continuous history than a series of chapters dealing with the exploration of the Amazon River from the discovery of Brazil in 1500 to the expose of Indian exploitation on the rubber plantations of the early 1900s. Smith, a British TV and radio personality and freelance writer, presents a number of colorful characters from the homicidal Lope de Aguirre to the polymath Baron von Humboldt to the British adventurer Henry Wickham. Edward Goodman's The Ex plorers of South America (LJ 8/72) covers much of the same ground as Smith's work does, though in more scholarly fashion, but Explorers of the Amazon certainly merits consideration as a readable, popular account.
- J.F. Husband, Framingham State Coll. Lib., Mass .
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

This history of European exploration of the Amazon will appeal to travel and adventure buffs. Illustrated.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0226763374
• ISBN 13: 9780226763378
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344