Amerika (A Doubleday anchor book)
by John Bartlet Brebner
Category: America

The exploration of American, from Columbus to Lewis and Clark, is one of the great adventures in human history, not only for the legendary heroism and determination of the men who undertook it, but for their still larger enterprise in planting in this wild, new world the seeds of civilization. Professor Brebner, in this classic account - by far the best written of the opening of the new hemisphere - considers both of these aspects. Basing his research on the diaries, records, and journals of the explorers themselves, he note only traces their progress but reveals them as human beings against a huge panorama in the Spaniards - Ponce de Leon, Cortés, Coronado, de Soto - push forward from the South; the French - Cartier, Champlain, Jolliet, Marquette - move down from the North: British and Americans set out westward from the Atlantic; and the Russians come down from Alaska. Brebner tells of the conditions of travel in the wilderness, of the aims of the early explorers, of the Indians in their primitive state, and of the way in which the North American continent was crossed and recrossed and finally unveiled within three hundred years by intrepid men -- Back cover.