Böcker av Charles W. J. Withers

This book offers the first full length biography of legendary explorer Mungo Park for over forty years. Tracing the expeditions who followed him it documents how and why he was commemorated long after his death. This is not simply one of the great stories of world exploration but a rich and varied account of Africa and its cultures at the time.

Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year award 2012

Using as its central example the British Association for the Advancement of Science this is the first book-length treatment of this leading body for the promotion of science for more than 25 years and the first ever of British geography's civic history. -- .

Charles Withers explains how the choice of Greenwich to mark 0 Degrees longitude solved problems of global measurement that had engaged geographers, astronomers, and mariners since ancient times. This history is a testament to the power of maps, the challenges of global measurement, and the role of scientific authority in creating the modern world.

In eighteenth - and nineteenth-century Britain, books of travel and exploration were much more than simply the printed experiences of intrepid authors. This book takes readers on a journey into the nature of exploration.