Shedding the Veil is a highly original overview of Europe's exploration and discovery beyond her own confines. It tackles the subject via an analysis of maps dating from circa 1434 to 1865, with an emphasis on the period before 1600. The book begins with an appraisal of the peculiar circumstances which led late medieval Europe to pursue long-distance travel, both overland and by sea, introduces cosmographic traditions inherited from classical times, and investigates pre-Columbian excursions into the western ocean. Finally, the great voyages and mappaemundi of the early sixteenth century are described in depth. After 1600 the focus begins to narrow North America and particularly to the colonization of the American Northeast. All maps discussed in detail are illustrated. 40 full-page b/w plates, 25 full-page color plates.

Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World brings together ten original essays by an international group of scholars exploring the complex outcomes of the intermingling of people, circulation of goods, exchange of information, and exposure to new ideas that are the hallmark of the early modern Atlantic. Spanning the period from the earliest French crossings to Newfoundland at the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the wars of independence in Spanish South America, c. 1830, and encompassing a range of disciplinary approaches, the contributors direct particular attention to regions, communities, and groups whose activities in, and responses to, an ever-more closely bound Atlantic world remain relatively under-represented in the literature. Some of the chapters focus on the experience of Europeans, including French consumers of Newfoundland cod, English merchants forming families in Spanish Seville, and Jewish refugees from Dutch Brazil making the Caribbean island of Nevis their home. Others focus on the ways in which the populations with whom Europeans came into contact, enslaved, or among whom they settled - the Tupi peoples of Brazil, the Kriston women of the west African port of Cacheu, among others - adapted to and were changed by their interactions with previously unknown peoples, goods, institutions, and ideas. Together with the substantial Introduction by the editor which reviews the significance of the field as a whole, these essays capture the complexity and variety of experience of the countless men and women who came into contact during the period, whilst highlighting and illustrating the porous and fluid nature, in practice, of the early modern Atlantic world.

Davies examines how Renaissance illustrated maps shaped ideas about peoples of the Americas, revealing relationships between civility, savagery and monstrosity.

The Northwest Passage was repeatedly sought for over four centuries. From the first attempt in the late 15th century to Roald Amundsen's famous voyage of 1903-1906 where the feat was first accomplished to expeditions in the late 1940s by the Mounties to discover an even more northern route, author Alan Day covers all aspects of the ongoing quest that excited the imagination of the world. This compendium of explorers, navigators, and expeditions tackles this broad topic with a convenient, but extensive cross-referenced dictionary. A chronology traces the long succession of treks to find the passage, the introduction helps explain what motivated them, and the bibliography provides a means for those wishing to discover more information on this exciting subject.

André Thevet was one of the most widely travelled Frenchmen of the sixteenth century, visiting almost all the main countries and regions of western Europe, the Near East, and Brazil. He served four consecutive French kings, beginning with Henry II, as Royal Cosmographer and "garde des singularitez." As cosmographer, he wrote three major books dealing with the discovery and subsequent exploration of the New World: Les Singularitez de la France antarctique (1556), La Cosmographie universelle (1575), and the Grand Insulaire (unpublished, 1586). Although the portions of these works devoted to South America have received considerable attention from scholars, Thevet's work on North America has remained inaccessible to students of the Age of Discovery. Professors Schlesinger and Stabler have now added Thevet to the list of enjoyable books by early European explorers of North America.

This illustrated collection of essays examines early Native American contact with European explorers, fishermen, and traders in “Norumbega,” the sixteenth-century name of the Atlantic coast of New England near the Penobscot River in Maine. This coast was the focus of several French and English voyagers seeking a northwest passage and other avenues to riches and treasure. A tacit division gradually emerged: the French concentrated on the region north of the Penobscot and the English on the lands to the south. The 100 illustrations in this book come largely from the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine and include many rare early maps (1500–1800). Ten are reproduced in full color.