To the Ends of the Earth

Reviews / Votes

Exploration of "new worlds" did not start with Columbus. In To the Ends of the Earth, Schulz offers a compelling, vivid account of those earlier journeys and the connectivity they brought across unfathomable distances and cultural divides. Following the trail of epic enterprises, technological innovations, and obscure knowledge-chains of Phoenicians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans, among others, Schulz' history decenters the Classical powerhouses and expands in every cardinal direction beyond colonial and imperial networks * Carolina Lopez-Ruiz, Author of Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean * To the Ends of the Earth is a wonderful romp through the history of Greco-Roman exploration, revealing an important and underappreciated aspect of the ancient Mediterranean world. From Phoenician sailors to the campaigns of Alexander and the wonders described by Pytheas in the north Atlantic, Schulz reminds us how new knowledge was created, and what the impacts of newly encountered places were on the Greco-Roman world. This is a very well written and serious book, and a complete joy to read. I learned something on every single page. * J. G. Manning, Author of The Open Sea * To the Ends Of the Earth is a synthetic and incisive discussion of why exploration took place in environments where leaving home would be a difficult and often fatal proposition. The chronological scope of the book is impressive and includes issues of why exploration seemed to come to a stop in late Roman times and then began again in the Renaissance. There is no recent book available that covers the broad range of exploration found in Schulz' book. * Duane W. Roller, Author of Empire of the Black Sea * [Schulz'] comprehensive study of commerce, conquest and exploration follows various Bronze Age adventurers on paths that lead to Carthage, Persia, India, China and elsewhere... The dangers courted by travelers in To the Ends of the Earth will daunt its readers. The wonders paraded ought to impress or inspire them. But it is to the curiosity of the ancient explorers that we owe the greatest debt. * Wall Street Journal * So deft is the author's handling of his material, and so lively his touch with ancient sources, that the reader never flags... Schulz has, I think, a convincing sense of why explorers' mental worlds are transcendent--always imagined before they become real, always fantastic even when experienced. His way of treating geography as a kind of literature, documented in poetry and fiction as much as in scholarship and science, helps us see explorers as they commonly saw themselves: heroes of fictions of their own, based in part on their readings, in part on their yearnings. * Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Times Literary Supplement * Successfully creates a comprehensive account of explorations that took place during the Middle Bronze Age (2000a1600 BCE) right up to the first century of the Common Era... The book rapidly covers enormous ground, and it utilizes a breadth of resources-literary, mythological, archaeological - from a vast array of Eurasian cultures in a compelling synthesis that never feels like mere survey... Highly recommended for scholarly readers, but general readers who are interested in reading titles that reevaluate when globalization began will appreciate it as well. * Library Journal * The treatment of myths and epics as historical travel accounts obscures the subject matter. It presents a single Homer who depicted Odysseus's journey and geographical locations as informed by travelers and sailors in the Iron Age, thus disregarding the complexity of that epic's composition. The bibliography is extensive. * Choice * To the Ends of the Earth...was the work I most admired. * Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year) * To the Ends of the Earth is a fascinating, ambitious, and thought-provoking account of ancient exploration. * Owain Williams, Ancient History *