Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

For this book Mr Rank has selected ten of the world’s greatest explorers to examine their lives and exploits and explains their contributions to the expansion of human knowledge in their lifetimes and beyond.Each frontiersman gets a chapter to himself and their tales are told with pace and verve, such that they hold the reader’s attention in the way that the very best fiction does. This is probably not surprising, given the extreme circumstances that many of these men found themselves in.This is not to say that the book is in any way light or lacking in serious content, it is clear that Michael Rank is a serious historian and plenty of appropriate research references are duly supplied in the bibliography. Thus, each chapter contextualises the traveler’s adventure and places it in its historical setting perfectly well.From the mediaval Chinese monk, Rabban Bar Sauma to Sir Ernest Shackleton (surely, the patron saint of lost causes) and on to Neil Armstrong, this book is an excellent read and I highly recommend it for its erudition, as well as its unadulterated entertainment value.

Having lways enjoyed travelling,travel writing and history I decided to read this despite not usually reading non-fiction. I am very glad I did as it was easy to read and contains fascinating stories about truley incredible journeys. For me the most interesting were the explorers i knew little or in some cases absolutely nothing about. To read about explorers travelling from the east to the west made a change.And to read about their adventures along the way gave me a new perspective of the world.