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National Geographic has always given readers the bigger picture of our world. Now The World Made New shows children the bigger context of American history. Written by award-winning children's author Marc Aronson and John W. Glenn, this innovative title will lead children through the causes and consequences of the defining age of exploration. Its unique approach will provide children with new ways of thinking about and learning from history, and instill a lasting sense of our country's past.

The World Made New provides a detailed account of the charting of the New World and the long-term effects of America's march into history. The text uses primary sources to bring history to life and features evocative profiles of the major explorers of the age. The book is beautifully illustrated with full-color artwork, multiple-time lines, and six custom National Geographic maps. The text and layout combine to provide an enlightening overview of New World exploration, and outline the historical context for the discoveries that literally changed the world.

The narrative carries young readers through this age of glorious, and sometimes inglorious, adventure. Follow the timeline of history unfolding; how the early colonies were established; how dissemination of products like the potato, tomato, tobacco, and corn made the Americas a major part of the new world economy; and how the Caribbean became a major trading hub. ... Read more

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Excellent book about early exploration...
We really liked the way that all of the information in this book was organized and presented.Excellent spring-board type book for a study on early exploration.Great read aloud for the whole family with plenty of pictures.I, as well as the kids really learned a lot! ... Read more

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In 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim "the Grim" conquered Egypt and brought his empire for the first time in history into direct contact with the trading world of the Indian Ocean.During the decades that followed, the Ottomans became progressively more engaged in the affairs of this vast and previously unfamiliar region, eventually to the point of launching a systematic ideological, military and commercial challenge to the Portuguese Empire, their main rival for control of the lucrative trade routes of maritime Asia.

The Ottoman Age of Exploration is the first comprehensive historical account of this century-long struggle for global dominance, a struggle that raged from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Straits of Malacca, and from the interior of Africa to the steppes of Central Asia.Based on extensive research in the archives of Turkey and Portugal, as well as materials written on three continents and in a half dozen languages, it presents an unprecedented picture of the global reach of the Ottoman state during the sixteenth century. It does so through a dramatic recounting of the lives of sultans and viziers, spies, corsairs, soldiers-of-fortune, and women from the imperial harem.Challenging traditional narratives of Western dominance, it argues that the Ottomans were not only active participants in the Age of Exploration, but ultimately bested the Portuguese in the game of global politics by using sea power, dynastic prestige, and commercial savoir faire to create their own imperial dominion throughout the Indian Ocean. ... Read more

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review
This book presents several highly philosophical and intellectual discussions. Yet it is written in a very beautiful and readable style. A layman such as myself obtained much knowledge and pleasure from this book.

Refreshingly revisionist vs. "the golden age of Moorish Spain"
Rémi Brague, a French historian, seeks to revise our notions of medieval thought, or what we mistakenly perceive as that era's lack of reason. His essays collected as "The Legend of the Middle Ages," explore philosophical intersections of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian pursuits of truth.

Modern intellectuals look at science differently than their medieval, yes, predecessors did. It's not that they did not study it, but that they studied it with an eye, literally, to seek another reason why to study natural phenomena. Here's a summary of key arguments Brague makes.

The Jewish scholars of the time looked to the world as they did to the heavens. There was not the separation from the Creator that distinguishes for most moderns who enter the laboratory or the observatory today the walling off of God from matter. Modernity itself would not have emerged, the professor opines, without the tremendous push from the medievals who sought in Aristotle the summa of knowledge, next to the Prophet, for the Arabic translators in Spain who transferred Greek wisdom and ancient knowledge into their own language. Once carried over, the Greek could be discarded by the Arab: their sacred tongue then subsumed that of the infidel's vernacular.

Certainly, this differed from those Jews who learned Arabic to rescue, as it were, the Greek storehouse of Aristotelian science, or the Catholics who did the same by learning Hebrew to delve more deeply into the shared scholarship of their own times. Brague goes on to insist that the legacy of Aristotle we inherit comes from Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians who turned the texts into Latin for dissemination across Christian Europe. The Arabs, contrarily, held that once the Greeks had been rendered into the language of the Qur'an, that no more transmission was needed. Perfection had been attained in the tongue of the Prophet.

For the Jews, they bridged the divide opened in Spain by their expulsion fromthe southern part of Iberia by the Almohid dynasty in the twelfth century. The Spanish Jews fled north and brought with them fluency in Arabic and a knack for polyglot survival. The Christians learned what the Jews had learned from the Muslims, who had found what they wanted in Aristotle's Greek.

Brague contrasts the relative openness of Jews and Christians towards their "pagan" inspirations with the rather more smug confidence of those in power and tenure, as it were, over Moorish Spain. The Arabs threw away the Greek corpus, so to speak, once it was safely transformed into the holy Arabic. The context fell away; the core remained intact, if approved for incorporation into what jibed with Islamic understanding.

Greeks gained commentary, line-by-line, when edited by Jews and Christians, contrarily. By keeping a sense of the original source texts along with what the Spanish intellectuals added or remarked upon, they allowed greater interaction between the Greek and Arab contexts and their own application of such complex frameworks to a wider European audience.

I wonder if the commonplace observation of Islamic stagnation intellectually under centralized power and fear of unorthodox opinions that would run counter to the Qur'an can be traced back to such diasporic forces? These foreshadow, in their institutional arrogance and clerical domination, the dispersion of both the Jews and the last Muslims from Spain. That final conquest by Christians ended in 1492 with the great Sephardic scattering-- when some fleeing Jews found themselves back in Salonika, speaking of Greece, at the source again?
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Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDSbuilds from Marc Epprecht's previous book, Hungochani (which focuses expli citly on same-sex desire in southern Africa) to explore the historical processes by which a singular, heterosexual identity for Africa was constructed—by anthropologists, ethnopsychologists, colonial officials, African elites, and most recently, health care workers seeking to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This is an eloquently written, accessible book, based on a rich and diverse range of sources, that will find enthusiastic audiences in classrooms and in the general public. Epprecht argues that Africans, just like people all over the world, have always had a range of sexualities and sexual identities. Over the course of the last two centuries, however, African societies south of the Sahara have come to be viewed as singularly heterosexual. Epprecht carefully traces the many routes by which this singularity, this heteronormativity, became a dominant culture. A fascinating story that will surely generate lively debate Epprecht makes his project speak to a range of literatures—queer theory, the new imperial history, African social history, queer and women's studies, and biomedical literature on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He does this with a light enough hand that his story is not bogged down by endless references to particular debates.Heterosexual Africa?aims to understand an enduring stereotype about Africa and Africans. It asks how Africa came to be defined as a “homosexual-free zone” during the colonial era, and how this idea not only survived the transition to independence but flourished under conditions of globalization and early panicky responses to HIV/AIDS. ... Read more

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The Age of Reconnaissance, as J. H. Parry has so aptly named it, was the period during which Europe discovered the rest of the world. It began with Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese voyages in the mid-fifteenth century and ended 250 years later when the "Reconnaissance" was all but complete. Dr. Parry examines the inducements--political, economic, religious--to overseas enterprises at the time, and analyzes the nature and problems of the various European settlements in the new lands. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Meat for the serious history reader
I found this book because of the favorable review it got in the American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature.It is definitely a serious academic work (published by University of California Press) but accessible to the general reader.It makes no attempt to offer interesting anecdotes or historical tidbits but gives an insightful look at early European voyages of "discovery, exploration, and settlement" through 1650.

Part I details the technological, social, political, and economic factors that led to the explosion of Europe onto the world scene with lots of space being dedicated to technologies of sailing, mapping, navigation and (not least of all) fighting.The second part is straight narrative outlining the history of the voyages themselves with a chapter for each destination region: Africa and the Indian Ocean, Atlantic and South Sea, America, etc...The final part discusses the empires of each of the European powers in turn: Spain, Portugal and Holland.There are also comparative chapters outlining differences in administration and economies between the empires. ... Read more

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A fine illustration of the European mindset
For some time I had looked for a good primary source for my students that did not speak directly to politics or religion. I have found it. The political and religious issues of the day emerge in Thevet, but morethrough his presuppositions than in his direct statements. I find thisquite refreshing, and my students agree. As important as it is to studyreligious and political documents from the era, this book blows the dustoff such matters and animates them in the world-view of one whose life theypermeated. Thevet also reminds us that commerce, politics, religion, andinter-cultural activity cannot be separated. The book is very readable,nontechnical, and conveniently brief. I do hope Dr. Schlesinger willpublish more of Thevet's biographies and treat them in a similar manner.Some books teach us about sixteenth century Europe and do it well; but thistitle does even better--it takes us there on a field trip. ... Read more

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Discusses the discoveries of several notable explorers active between 1492 and 1522, including Columbus, Da Gama, Drake, and Magellan. ... Read more

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Good book
Interesting book - I enjoyed it alot ... Read more

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Traces the life of Christopher Columbus and describes the voyages and discoveries of various fifteenth and sixteenth-century explorers. ... Read more