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Examines the human quest for knowledge and discoveries as it discusses such men as Galileo, Adam Smith, Columbus, Marx, Napoleon, Magellan, Faraday, Freud, Marco Polo, and St. Augustine.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• A Personal Note to the Reader(p. xv)
• Book 1 Time
• Part I The Heavenly Empire
• 1. The Temptations of the Moon(p. 4)
• 2. The Week: Gateway to Science(p. 12)
• 3. God and the Astrologers(p. 19)
• Part II From Sun Time to Clock Time
• 4. Measuring the Dark Hours(p. 26)
• 5. The Rise of the Equal Hour(p. 36)
• 6. Making Time Portable(p. 46)
• Part III The Missionary Clock
• 7. Open Sesame to China(p. 56)
• 8. Mother of Machines(p. 64)
• 9. Why It Happened in the West(p. 72)
• Book 2 The Earth and the Seas
• Part IV The Geography of the Imagination
• 10. The Awe of Mountains(p. 82)
• 11. Charting Heaven and Hell(p. 86)
• 12. The Appeal of Symmetry(p. 92)
• 13. The Prison of Christian Dogma(p. 100)
• 14. A Flat Earth Returns(p. 107)
• Part V Paths to the East
• 15. Pilgrims and Crusaders(p. 116)
• 16. How the Mongols Opened the Way(p. 124)
• 17. Missionary Diplomats(p. 128)
• 18. The Discovery of Asia(p. 134)
• 19. The Land Curtain Comes Down(p. 139)
• Part VI Doubling the World
• 20. Ptolemy Revived and Revised(p. 146)
• 21. Portuguese Sea Pioneers(p. 156)
• 22. Beyond the Threatening Cape(p. 165)
• 23. To India and Back(p. 172)
• 24. Why Not the Arabs?(p. 178)
• 25. The Chinese Reach Out(p. 186)
• 26. An Empire without Wants(p. 195)
• Part VII The American Surprise
• 27. The Wandering Vikings(p. 204)
• 28. Dead End in Vinland(p. 209)
• 29. The Power of the Winds(p. 217)
• 30. "The Enterprise of the Indies"(p. 224)
• 31. Fair Winds, Soft Words, and Luck(p. 231)
• 32. Paradise Found and Lost(p. 235)
• 33. Naming the Unknown(p. 244)
• Part VIII Sea Paths to Everywhere
• 34. A World of Oceans(p. 256)
• 35. The Reign of Secrecy(p. 267)
• 36. Knowledge Becomes Merchandise(p. 271)
• 37. The Ardors of Negative Discovery(p. 278)
• Book 3 Nature
• Part IX Seeing the Invisible
• 38. Into "the Mists of Paradox"(p. 294)
• 39. The Witness of the Naked Eye(p. 305)
• 40. A Vision Troubled and Surprised(p. 312)
• 41. Caught in the Cross Fire(p. 322)
• 42. New Worlds Within(p. 327)
• 43. Galileo in China(p. 332)
• Part X Inside Ourselves
• 44. A Mad Prophet Points the Way(p. 338)
• 45. The Tyranny of Galen(p. 344)
• 46. From Animals to Man(p. 351)
• 47. Unseen Currents Within(p. 361)
• 48. From Qualities to Quantities(p. 368)
• 49. "The Microscope of Nature"(p. 376)
• Part XI Science Goes Public
• 50. A Parliament of Scientists(p. 386)
• 51. From Experience to Experiment(p. 394)
• 52. "God Said, Let Newton Be!"(p. 401)
• 53. Priority Becomes the Prize(p. 408)
• Part XII Cataloguing the Whole Creation
• 54. Learning to Look(p. 420)
• 55. The Invention of Species(p. 429)
• 56. Specimen Hunting(p. 436)
• 57. Stretching the Past(p. 446)
• 58. In Search of the Missing Link(p. 457)
• 59. Paths to Evolution(p. 464)
• Book 4 Society
• Part XIII Widening the Communities of Knowledge
• 60. The Lost Arts of Memory(p. 480)
• 61. Empire of the Learned(p. 489)
• 62. The Duplicating Impulse(p. 498)
• 63. "The Art of Artificial Writing"(p. 510)
• 64. Communities of the Vernacular(p. 517)
• 65. Transforming the Book(p. 524)
• 66. Books Go Public(p. 533)
• 67. The Island of Islam(p. 539)
• 68. Toward a World Literature(p. 547)
• Part XIV Opening the Past
• 69. The Birth of History(p. 558)
• 70. Christianity Gives Direction(p. 566)
• 71. Revising the Record(p. 574)
• 72. Explorers among the Ruins(p. 581)
• 73. "To Wake the Dead"(p. 588)
• 74. Latitudes of Time(p. 596)
• 75. The Discovery of Prehistory(p. 603)
• 76. Hidden Dimensions: History as Therapy(p. 613)
• Part XV Surveying the Present
• 77. "All Mankind Is One"(p. 626)
• 78. The Shock of the Primitive(p. 636)
• 79. A Science of Culture(p. 646)
• 80. An Expanding Universe of Wealth(p. 652)
• 81. Learning from Numbers(p. 667)
• 82. The Infinite and the Infinitesimal(p. 675)
• Some Reference Notes(p. 685)
• Acknowledgments(p. 715)
• Index(p. 719)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

A prolific writer, Daniel Boorstin is the author of numerous scholarly and popular works in American Studies. Born in Georgia and raised in Oklahoma, Boorstin received degrees from Harvard and Yale universities and was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. A member of the Massachusetts Bar, he has been visiting professor of American History at the Universities of Rome, Puerto Rico, Kyoto, and Geneva. He was the first incumbent of the chair of American History at the Sorbonne and Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge. He taught at the University of Chicago for 25 years.

In 1959 Columbia University awarded him its Bancroft Prize for The Americans: The Colonial Experience (1958), the first volume of his trilogy titled The Americans. In 1966 he received the Francis Parkman Award for the second volume, The Americans: The National Experience (1965), and in 1974 he received the Pulitzer Prize for the third volume, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973). Many of Boorstin's books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and various European languages.

In 1969 Boorstin became director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1973 he became senior historian at the Smithsonian. Boorstin was appointed Librarian of Congress in 1975 and served in that position with distinction for 12 years, becoming Librarian Emeritus in 1987.

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