Recounts the triumphs and mishaps of Columbus and other explorers, following the naturalists--both famous and obscure--whose investigations of the world's fauna

"Uncommonly good…makes a compelling case that…intellectual curiosity not only changed Europe, but launched modernity." —Cleveland Plain Dealer When Columb

"A fascinating historiographical essay. . . . An unusually lucid and inclusive explication of what it ultimately at stake in the culture wars over the nature, g

As unique as the city it describes, Annapolis, City on the Severn builds on the most recent scholarship and offers readers a fascinating portrait into the past

Between 1777 and 1816, botanical expeditions crisscrossed the vast Spanish empire in an ambitious project to survey the flora of much of the Americas, the Carib