Explorers: A New History

Norton Shorts

by Matthew Lockwood

A surprising history of exploration featuring a new cast―including fugitives, indigenous pathfinders, and immigrants―that celebrates the universal qualities of discovery.

The impulse to seek out new worlds is universal to humanity. In a truly inclusive account of exploration, historian Matthew Lockwood interweaves stories of famous figures―including Sacagawea, Pocahontas, and Dr. David Livingstone―with tales of individuals who are usually denied the title “explorer.” Lockwood’s new cast of adventurers includes Rabban Bar Sawma, a Uighur monk who traversed the Middle East and Europe; Yatsuke, an East African traveler to Japan during the sixteenth century; and David Dorr, a man born in slavery whose travelogues reshaped Americans’ understanding of Africa. In lives filled with imagination and wonder, curiosity, connection, and exchange, these figures unfurl a human tapestry of discovery. Spanning forty centuries and six continents, this thrilling and concise history redefines what it means to discover, who counts as an explorer, and what counts as exploration.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, World History, American History, Biography, Science

192 pages, Paperback

Published August 5, 2025

About the author

Matthew Lockwood is assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama and the author of The Conquest of Death: Violence and the Birth of the Modern English State.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Lockwood's Explorers is not really a revisionist history, but more of a supplement to the canonical stories of explorers who are largely white male Europeans. The overarching theme is that there is nothing special about Western culture that makes us want to explore, and the motivators of curiosity and imagination that cause us to seek new lands are part of what make us human.

Lockwood provides examples of: non-European voyages of discovery, the "discovered" peoples who then reciprocated by joining return voyages (this started with Columbus), indigenous guides (e.g. Sacajawea) who were as curious and crucial to success as the nominal mission leads, and Western women who infiltrated the Harems of Turkey and the Middle east. Each example Lockwood gives is pretty short, but there is a decent list of sources where we can find out more. I personally recommend Hampton Side's account of Mai - a Tahitian who returned with Captain Cook - in The Wide, Wide Sea (not in the list of sources), and Candace Millard's account (in The River of the Gods) of Sidi Mubarak Bombay who guided Richard Burton's search for the headwaters of the Nile (listed by Lockwood).

The point is perhaps a bit stretched when involuntary migrants (e.g. Russian Jews coming to America) are included as "Explorers". Why not include modern tourists? Nevertheless, this is a satisfying short read and a useful correction to the standard narratives.

Thanks to netgalley and Norton for providing a pre-release egalley for early review. This book has certainly piqued my interest in the Norton Shorts series. Tya Miles's Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation and Dennis Yi Tenen's Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write are going on my TBR list.

[Colby Cheshire · Rating 2 out of 5]

i feel like this is a strong premise that i felt was not followed through successfully. we start with the overview that essentially "exploration" is an insufficiently described phenomenon disproportionately emphasizing "canonical" European explorers' contributions over others.

fine. like certainly valid.

my issue is two-fold.

first, in my opinion, we went from simply describing and contextualizing these other explorers' efforts to romanticizing them and condensing their agency into an essentially racialized paradigm of havers and have-nots. maybe i'm too american but i feel that we were just missing a lot of other discussion that could have brought more depth to the conversation like sex and class. yes, we touched on sex a little bit; still, in all of the discussion of Sacagawea, it was never mentioned that she was a victim of gender violence. like??? i feel that a book with this audience (educated and affluent NPR-listening White people) should have developed this point further. why can't we have read more about class impacting explorers? so underdeveloped.

from here we begin the obvious and logical descent into an Orientalization of the Noble Savage. i do feel that you simply cannot write a book and be like wowowo these exotic people sure are so wise! their great leaders have foretold many happenings with their mystical rites! like lockwood critiques a lot of this kind of lazy and unintelligent kind of thought immediately before falling into the same thing.

related: i felt this book was incredibly Presentist. like obviously it just does not make sense to use our conception of morality to frame historical figures' actions. are there universal morals? how do we understand right and wrong? what makes somebody deserve something more than somebody else? these are questions we are still wrestling with and which, indeed, are highly contentious TODAY. it's just bad "history" to apply 21st century ethics and morality to ancient happenings.

also be so serious WHO is defending slavery? WE KNOW IT IS NOT GOOD! please do not feel the need to wax poetic about how it is bad like yes obviously please move on.

second, the definition of "exploration" is obviously lazy. anyone who engages in discovery is an explorer? okay, i went to my first solidcore class yesterday. am i an explorer because that was a new experience for me? what about somebody who is "exploring" polyamory? are they an explorer? please operationalize this variable more sufficiently.

related: why are we yassifying people leaving pogroms as girl boss slay explorer queens? maybe it's actually not a good thing that they had to leave the european steppes as they were afeared for their lives. hmmmm just a thought.

i do not recommend, but mercifully it was short.

[Bethany Borgia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting. Interesting arguments. Rather lovely but I just wasn’t into it.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful re-examination of the ages of exploration focusing on the human desire to learn and on lesser known explorers. Columbus is seen through the eyes of the Native Americans who went to explore Spain, for instance., and Lewis and Clark through Sacagawea. While not ignoring the horrors of Imperialism, the writer broadens our vison of what it means to explore and introduces us to some fascinating but often forgotten people.

[Jonathan Crain · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "Explorers: A New History," Matthew Lockwood challenges our traditional understanding of "discovery," redefining it as a multifaceted process driven by curiosity, necessity, and the pursuit of knowledge rather than mere conquest.

Lockwood posits that exploration is a shared endeavor of cross-cultural exchange and collaboration. He argues that discovery is not just about encountering something new, but about how those encounters shape our perspectives and understanding of the world and ourselves. This fresh take on exploration highlights the contributions of lesser-known individuals from diverse backgrounds, whose knowledge and skills were often crucial to the success of more famous expeditions.

The book brings to light several unsung heroes of exploration. For instance, Tupaia, a Polynesian navigator, proved indispensable to Captain James Cook's 18th-century Pacific expeditions. Similarly, Matthew Henson, an African American explorer, played a pivotal role in Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole in the early 20th century. These stories not only demonstrate the courage and determination of these individuals but also underscore the power of diversity in shaping our understanding of the world.

Lockwood's work is a quick read—I finished it in two short sessions—but it packs a powerful punch. He skillfully reframes our understanding of exploration, giving voice to underrepresented explorers whose contributions have been historically overlooked or erased. The author's approach is refreshing, though I sometimes wished for even more depth on some of the fascinating individuals he introduces.

If you're interested in exploration, particularly from non-traditional perspectives, I highly recommend this Norton Short. Lockwood's "Explorers: A New History" challenges our preconceptions and inspires us to reconsider the nature of discovery and the diverse voices that have shaped our understanding of the world.

This review is of an advance reader copy provided by W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley. The publication date is October 15, 2024.

[Book Club of One · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Lockwood's Explorers: A New History is the latest in the Norton Shorts series. Books in this series are intended to present new perspectives and leading work in under two hundred pages aimed at the collegiate level.

Explorers takes the definition of the word as the root of the content. Well known explorers are described and detailed (exs. Marco Polo, Columbus, Humboldt), but Lockwood also provides brief bios and accomplishments of many lesser known historical figures.

In fact, Lockwood expands greatly on the understanding of an explorer. Moving beyond the Euro-centrist 'discovery' of the new world, Lockwood looks at it much more as an exchange with records of indigenous peoples both voluntarily or forced into servitude reactions to Europe. Lockwood based a lot of the content on records allowing the explorers or their witnesses to speak in their own words.

A concise but thorough overview of the notable or should be notable explorers and their crimes or contributions to humanity.

Recommended to readers of history (general) , world history, or travel writing.

I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

[Nadia Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5rounded up. I enjoyed this book in the sense that I learned a lot about the types of exploration that occurred throughout time. And I enjoyed that it highlighted people beyond the white historian/archaeologist who “discovered” a new place. And even when discussing the white historian, the book also highlighted the indigenous or local people who helped out along the way. In this sense, it gives credit to everyone involved. Even those who didn’t start out in Europe or other English speaking places. I realize that this book is purposefully short but I do wish it had encompassed more. While it did do a great job on touching every continent, I felt like it was lacking in the sense that it didn’t highlight as many explorers from Asia or South America or Australia as it did people from Europe and arguably Africa. But I realize this book can’t cover everything and for what it’s worth, I think it was a fascinating read

[Jacob Longini · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and easy retelling of history’s exploration highlights - all from a new perspective of those voices that were left out in traditional tellings. Which natives guided the famous expeditions? How is migration a form of exploration? I had the opportunity to meet with Lockwood on zoom just after completing this read, and I can vouch that his approach/intentions play out well. I’d like to read longer form content from him.

[Jeff Lewonczyk]

How nice to be reminded that exploration is an experience dependent upon the context of the explorer and that the people who have brought new perspectives and insight to various locations around the globe throughout history haven't all been the white European men that too many streets and cities are named after. Those stories can be interesting too, but this is a much-needed jumping-off point to exploring for yourself the stories that aren't quite as well-known.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book but I skipped a few chapters

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very interesting because it has re-written about how the indigenous guides, the persons who were participating with main explorers in the World history to explore the world from the Americas to Europe such as Asia, Africa, and Oceania. There has six chapters including imaging, new world, exchange, migration, interpreting, and connection how the humans have been exploring around the world from various places, not just Europeans. Matthew Lockwood who wrote this book is very summarized and emphasized the other people such as the Asians, the Africans, and the Indigenous Americans who were also explorers. It is good and short to read the book. I gave this five stars.

[Joan]

I’m not officially rating this book because it is a book with a drastic change in the genre of exploration. First books often have faults that later books won’t have and therefore need some slack. The author points out that clearly we miss a lot of explorers that were not white and were not men. This far I can agree. He points out Lady Mary Montagu travelled among the East and got admitted to women only areas such as bathhouses and that it wasn’t the depraved area that popular imagination would think nor that the women felt imprisoned by their complete covering of the body but felt that the anonymity gave them privacy. She was the one who first brought back tales of vaccination and had her son vaccinated against Smallpox to start doctors looking at immunization. I believe Montagu is normally spelled Montague. I cannot tell if this is from reading an ARC or if he is using a different spelling deliberately.

I agree porters and guides on classic exploration trips should be included in the exploration category. I found it fascinating when the author recounted some of their stories as well as Indian or African people who went to Europe and returned to tell their adventures and experiences to their fellow Indians, Africans or Native Americans.

The author tried to stretch the definition of explorers to include migrants such as Jewish immigrants to the USA from Russia. For me that is a step too far. Explorers chose freely to go exploring. Many migrants of the past and present didn’t necessarily choose to emigrate but did so to save their lives. Yes they well may have wanted to go and were curious about where they were going but usually there was an element outside their control as well.

This book did not hold my interest much with the writing style or a really overly broad definition of who could be called an explorer. But as the first in a drastic change in the explorer category, I won’t rate this. Recommended until better written books come along.

[Bree58 · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it is true that those who conquer write the stories. Lockwood demonstrates elegantly the reality of the human desire and perhaps innate need to explore. The desire to see who and what is out there is universal, as he demonstrates in this short book that leaves the reader wanting more.

[Rebecca Murrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

So wonderful! I love History and love even more learning about the hidden history

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

BY THE TIME THE Tenshō embassy arrived in Lisbon in 1584, as many as two million Indigenous Americans had discovered Europe. So many Native Americans had firsthand knowledge of Europe that when the wary Pilgrim settlers of the Plymouth Colony made their first formal contact with an Indigenous person on a brisk March day in 1621, they were greeted with the words “Welcome Englishmen!” and a request for beer.

Some depictions of exploration often lie in an uncomfortable juxtaposition with what we know about the entanglement of exploration and imperialism, and it is tempting to discard the terms “discovery” and “exploration” altogether, to consign studies of explorers to the dustbin of history. But if we discard the history of exploration, we discard a vital element of the human story along with it, a story that transcends culture, ethnicity, gender, and geography. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the history of humanity or fully comprehend the human condition without understanding the universal impulse to explore. People of every background imagine new worlds. People from every corner of the globe search for the unknown, seeking out the unfamiliar and trying to understand it..

A wonderful and inclusive overview of some of the most interesting explorers we may never had heard of, in an engaging style, with just enough information to be a springboard to more discovery. I have a vagabond heart, set out from my home town at 18 and never returned except to visit; and while I have been content in Colorado for many years, I still love to explore new places in deep and enriching ways. It is such a part of my story, the human story, and I loved this book.

Discovery is not unidirectional and never belongs to a single group of people. When the Eora leader Bennelong’s ship docked at Falmouth in 1793, didn’t he discover England for the Indigenous peoples of Australia just as Captain Cook had discovered Australia for the English some twenty years before? Fugitives from slavery, the panoply of immigrants who fostered the notion of “the American dream,” the Jamaican migrants who transformed Britain in the 1950s, the Black Southerners seeking better lives in the North in the Great Migration—don’t they all belong in the pantheon of great explorers? All were explorers in every way that matters.

EVERY JOURNEY BEGINS in the imagination. From the first of the Homo sapiens to set out from the Great Rift Valley to the first human to step out onto the surface of the moon, every act of exploration has taken hold in the adventurer’s mind before it is accomplished. Human exploration began in prehistory, as far back as 300,000 BCE, when the first humans left their homes in East Africa and set out across first Africa and then Eurasia. Over the next 300,000 years, the human family spread out across the far reaches of the globe. The earliest accounts of exploration that emerged in the ancient world—handed down to us in myths and epics told and retold around the fire for generations before they were written down—carry fragmentary memories of this first age of discovery. Myths of migration and exploration—suggesting that we, our human family, began in another place before we came to this one; or that siblings went different ways; or that someone was cast out to make a new life elsewhere; or that a traveler from a far-off place was taken in—helped to weaken geographic distinctions between human groups and inspired curiosity about the outside world.

The voices of these Indigenous explorers have been all but erased from the story of the Columbian exchange and the history of exploration. But the echoes of their journeys persist. “The wind now rises, howling and moaning” begins the Cantares Mexicanos, which encodes the folk memory of the many Indigenous voyagers to the new world across the sea. “Thus does the ocean seethe and the ship creaks its way along.… We behold the massive waves.”

Mary Wortley Montagu’s determination to face the world with an open mind resulted in an entirely new account of the Muslim world, one stripped of sensationalism and brimming with sympathy. Her description of a bagnio, or Turkish bath, in Sofia has none of the usual prurience of other travelers’ imaginations. Despite sticking out in her stiff European riding dress, which she recognized “certainly appeared very extraordinary to them,” she was made to feel welcome by the other women at the bath: “Not one of ’em showed the least surprise or impertinent curiosity, but received me with all obliging civility possible. I know no European court where the ladies would have behaved themselves in so polite a manner to a stranger.” There were “none of those disdainful smiles or satiric whispers that never fail in our assemblies when anybody appears that is not dressed exactly in fashion.”

[Peter Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer, I have a research based Master's in History from Old Dominion University.

Pros: There's a lot of little moments in here that are really interesting perspectives that I had not previously known. This book has plenty of accounts of female and BIPOC explorers, flowing over the entire globe in scope and travel. The small chapter on migrations and the concept that these sometimes forced journeys are an exploration of their own is particularly fantastic, and could likely be a good 300-page book on its own, rather than the footnote it occupies here.

Mids: Lockwood has a dismissive sense of humor when it comes to the violence committed by past explorers. This is somewhat typical, in my experience, of historians at and above Master's level. (generally as a coming mechanism for the amount of tragedy we have studied, myself included) Unfortunately, it is lobbed towards some historical figures that potentially don't deserve it as much as he implies.

Cons: Book is incredibly broad in scope, effectively 142 pages of light survey course on exploration. If you read this book and have any prior research in any of the myriad fields he lumps into the book, you have an equal chance of finding a respectful treatise with new perspective, or a dismissive quip assuming the reader is of the same mind as the author on the "infamy", or "notoriety" of various historic explorers. The biggest problem is that no matter how interesting each of the little windows into various explorers is, there is never more than a handful of pages about each before the book hard-lefts into another explorer.

TLDR: Interesting new perspectives, but more for the beginner history buff than anyone with in depth knowledge or anyone trained in methods of historiography and bias mitigation. If you have read any in-depth works on explorers this year, prepare to maybe be affronted at Lockwood's dismissive tone.

Footnote: The reason this pissed me off so much is that it had the unfortunate luck to be positioned after I read 1491, 1493, Paradise of the Damned, Two Sherpas, and The Last Island, all fantastic in-depth books that have to do with exploration, both modern and Age of Discovery.

[Patricia Almeida · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Explorers - A New Story" by Matthew Lockwood explores the universal human drive to explore, fueled by various motivations like curiosity, economic interests, political calculations, ego, social pressure, and necessity. The book stresses that exploration isn't exclusive to any single group, highlighting the diverse and complex motivations behind discovery.

It challenges the stereotype of the lone explorer by emphasizing the essential roles of local guides, interpreters, and porters, advocating for their recognition as explorers too. Exploration is presented as a mutual exchange of information and expertise, with explorers acting as interpreters of distant lands and cultures for their countrymen, shaping global perspectives.

Lockwood draws parallels between historical explorers and modern migrants, portraying migration as a form of exploration. Migrants, like explorers, critically assess and adapt to new environments. The book also recounts stories of lesser-known individuals who played crucial roles in the discovery and exploration of new territories.

In essence, the book underscores themes of exploration, exchange, interpretation, guiding, and migration. It describes exploration as a timeless, universal impulse driven by curiosity and imagination, concluding that discovery is infinite and a matter of perspective, celebrating the diversity and shared heritage of exploration.

[Simms · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting corrective to and expansion on our usual history of "explorers" which seeks to highlight some of the exploration done by people outside the usual "white man with a pith helmet or sailing ship charging into the unknown" narrative. (I particularly liked the chapter discussing the "native guides" or porters who accompanied such expeditions, emphasizing that no, these guys weren't just faceless nameless helpers but often legitimate explorers in their own right.) The main problem is that the book is just so short, and tries to pack in a LOT of examples, so you get just the barest moment with each story or example. It also gets a little too carried away with its definition of "discovery" at times, such as when it described two Indigenous Australians as the first Indigenous Australians to discover Europe. Explore Europe, sure, learn about it and carry that knowledge back to their countrymen, absolutely; but "discover Europe" is a bit much when the two of them traveled to Europe as guests of a European ship captain.

[Dr. Awkward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have given up reading this book despite its interesting premise. It meanders a bit, and it is unstructured in a way that doesn't fit my reading habits. The sources used also seem questionable and (not to sound too aggressive for this kind of a book) unprofessionally attributed.
In all, despite a purpose that was interesting enough to make me buy the book (so I guess that's what matters in some way), and even though there are some genuinely interesting contents and the writing is of reasonable quality sentence to sentence, overall the book promises more than it delivers, and I opted not to finish reading.

[Shaheer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love what this book wants to do.

This book soars when it shows us how the desire for exploration is innate in each of us, but that gets lost when it jumps from narrative to narrative quickly. I think I would have loved this if it had focused more extensively on the stories of a handful of explorers like Rabban Bar Sauma or Rassul Galwan, whose feelings we do understand. I get why the stories of those who couldn't tell their own are *important*, but it's definitely less impactful and slows everything down.

[Nick Capicotto · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is written for the tik tok generation. Lockwood jumps between stories of explorers every 3-4 pages, leading to a surface level overview that fails to tell many of the explorer’s stories to completion or with depth.

The chapter on guides and the conclusion are enjoyable but overall Lockwood uses generalizations to lump experiences as varied as The Great Migration and the explorations of Captain James Cook. Lockwood tries to hedge these claims by acknowledging the former and as forced, but it is still an irresponsible claim for an academic historian to make.

Do not read this book.

[Irwin Weiss, MD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short interesting book that speaks of some of the more obscure explorations as well as some of the more widely known ones. The emphasis of this work is not on the expedition leaders, most of them pretty well known, but on the guides, the translators, the schleppers, and so on. Also he speaks of some who were willing to take another look at different cultures. All in all a short interesting read. This book would have been helped by some maps of the various expeditions described.

[Dana Kraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how this book demonstrates the agency and motivations of non-Western people in their interactions with Western explorers and cultures. His goal of looking at different aspects of ‘exploration’ is interesting. The last chapter on migration felt like a stretch to me. That said, this is a quick and very interesting read, and his notes on sources gave me some additional source material to add to my list.

[Sarah J Stebbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read, but being so short (142 pages) it really just scratches the surface of the various, and mostly unknown, explorers that have existed throughout history. A great read as I learned about a lot of people I had never heard of, but also would have liked some of their stories expanded. I feel maybe that was the author’s intent though, just to get someone interested and knowledgeable about these other explorers.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more interesting than the older books on exploration as it covers the people who were vital to the success of these missions, Includes the inoculation of smallpox method brought to Europe from the east by Mary Montagu and Peary's African-American partner Matthew Henson who was the first to reach the north pole. It's a fast read and that's not shocking, Norton's Shorts are all under 200 pages.

[Tim Briedis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, epic decolonial history of exploration. Sweeping across continents, Lockwood introduces us to unknown, erased explorers from Asia, the Pacific and Australia. We see people from the Taino and Aboriginal Australians like Bennelong cross continents, and Muslim guides escort people to forbidden Tibet. We see the legendary journey of Chinese admiral Zheng He, and much more. We learn how migration itself constitutes an exploratory act. Five stars

[Moirad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skims the surface of a wide range of individuals, using a very broad definition of "explorer" - basically anyone experiencing a new set of circumstances in a new place - the enslaved, migrants, guides etc. Needed a much deeper study.

[The_J · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this is what counts as "A New History," it is no wonder the test scores are so low. Here there is little of the sweep or grandeur or the risks that the explorers overcame. But there is plenty of blame to be found.

[Alastair Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with any book of this format it leaves you wanting more, but that's the point. This is a lovely demonstration of the human desire for exploration, the curiosity of travel and how people all over the world and throughout history have felt that pull.

[Amit Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK read. The book is interesting in parts but not very coherent. Some explorers are given multiple pages while others have only a couple of them devoted if at all. How it transitions into different areas during each chapter seemed a bit random. Overall a good effort though.