Boats, Blisters and Frostbite : The Story of Exploration Through The Ages

by Jonathan J. Moore

Boats, Blisters and Frostbite is a rip-roaring adventure through the history of global exploration-from the early days of the Silk Road to 16th century caravals that set out from Europe to conquer North America . This is an eye-opening look at history’s most ingenious adventurers and pioneers of exploration, who dealt with freezing temperatures, vast seas, towering mountain ranges and parched deserts. Packed full of tales of extreme risk-taking and derring-do in search of uncharted territory, as well as tragic tales where travelers got lost despite their best efforts, this book won’t fail to engage and intrigue . There is something to learn about exploration and travel from every era and every continent in these pages . Fascinating paintings and photographs help bring these incredible stories to vivid life.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

207 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2020

About the author

Jonathan Moore was born in 1964 and attended University where he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree, with majors in History and English. In a career involving twenty years as a history teacher as well as running several successful businesses, Jonathan has been a voracious reader of all periods of History. In pursuit of his studies Jonathan has travelled extensively and enjoys war gaming and military re-enacting. He also enjoys True Crime and has written several books on the subject.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boats, Blisters, and Frostbite is about global exploration, though honestly it focused mainly on European exploration of the planet with some sections dedicated non-Europeans. This barely over 200-page book is filled with illustrations and text meant to inform, however when one of the first images appears to be an Australopithecine and is labeled as a Neanderthal that intent comes into question and later on in the book the author calls Neanderthals and Denisovans as proto-humans which my limited knowledge of the subject is incorrect as they are considered extinct human species. Even though human evolution isn’t the main topic, the carelessness in researching alone makes the reader question if what their reading is accurate especially as the author would put down that the Viking made it to Rhode Island when there is no actual evidence yet that is the case—I’m not saying it isn’t plausible. Frankly this book has legitimate facts that is surrounded by questionable stuff both written and illustrated that I would not recommend it to others.

[Anna Bn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining book but very europe focused. Exploration is mainly interpreted as that by europeans and only touches upon explorations by others in some sentences here and there. Should best be titled as the story of european exploration. Voice of book is also unclear and changes over time.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 200 bladzijdes neemt Jonathan J. Moore je mee op een wilde rit te land, ter zee en in de lucht op een reis die meer dan twee millennia in beslag neemt.

Chronologisch behandelt hij de ontdekking van de aarde - en, helemaal op het einde, daarbuiten. Dat doet hij veelal vanuit een Westers (Europees) standpunt, al was ik blij dat ook mensen als Zheng He en de Polynesiërs soms in de schijnwerpers belandden. Inhoudelijk had ik alleen het idee dat de auteur wel snel komaf maakte met de expedities naar Antarctica, waar maar enkele bladzijdes aan zijn gewijd - ondanks een hele reeks reizen om op het continent door te dringen. Maar verder was dit bijzonder interessant en onderhoudend.

Het is natuurlijk ook een aaneenschakeling van moord, oorlog, ziekte, onherstelbaar natuurverlies, ongeluk tot in de tiende graad en mislukkingen, maar ja, dat mag natuurlijk de (lees)pret niet bederven. Ahum.

De vertaling is van Uta Anderson, die over het algemeen best goed werk heeft geleverd. Vreemd wel dat de schrijfwijzes van namen bij de foto's soms anders zijn dan in de lopende tekst - heeft iemand die bijschriften vertaald? Verder leest alles gelukkig erg vlot, al moet ik zeggen dat ik vind dat Moore in het begin een iets te eenvoudig toontje aanslaat, alsof hij een kinderboek aan het schrijven is. En ook de introducties tot de aparte onderdelen lopen soms een beetje spaak, ze passen niet vloeiend aan de rest van het verhaal.

Maar desondanks is dit een sterk boek om eens door te lezen als je benieuwd bent naar hoe de wereld voor Europeanen en soms andere volkeren zich verspreid en de wereld verkend hebben. Alle afbeeldingen maken het des te levendiger en indrukwekkender.

7,5/10

[Beatrice · Rating 3 out of 5]

My opinions on this book are pretty mixed. My main problem with it is its inability to decide how it wants to portray these explorers and the people they meet. Within the first chapter, there's an insistence on calling every single culture the explorers interact with strange, which goes as far as describing a language as strange. Then in later chapters, they sympathize with the indigenous people, all while praising people like Christopher Columbus. This book seems torn between praising the explorers it discusses, and acknowledging the terrible things that they did, which leads them to mention the atrocities offhandedly, despite the fact that they were committed by the very subjects of the book. It also has a bad habit of discussing only the practices of native peoples that we see as despicable, and ignoring the rest. This book could have been worse, but it also could have been a lot better.

[Gus Pellegrino · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very poorly written book.

I really wanted to like it, because I enjoy adventure literature, but halfway through I just put it down and left it at the book kiosk in my local suburban train station. The general idea to write a series of discovery stories is interesting, but the execution is terrible. Many factual errors. Rather than support the ideas of the text, the images are just randomly thrown in. The one that did it for me was a picture of Machu Picchu on page 93 that was cut in half and didn’t even have an explanation label. You can tell right away that the author is just an amateur historian- there are so many better-written books about the topic.

[Rudi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Als ik het vergelijk met andere boeken van deze schrijver, vond ik deze misschien iets minder blijven hangend , .. vroeger was alles beter ,
De voorouders van sapiens en waar die kwamen uitgerold moeten toch vindingrijk , nieuwsgierig en taai geweest zijn , ben ook wat benieuwd wat de ( nieuwere ) ontdekkingsreizen , ruimte , diepzee nog zullen brengen van inzichten,
Een boek over ontdekkingsreizen en/of herontdekkingsreizen naargelang perspectief, vroeger was alles wel anders en beter, zo vanaf 6 september 569 is het wat de verkeerde kant beginnen uitgaan ,
3,49 sterren het boek leest vlot met weetjes die niet helemaal blijven hangen ( bij deze lezer )

[Keslie O'Rear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book, I especially liked the fact that they touched upon the less than stellar parts of exploration without entirely demonizing explorers who, for better or worse, still did great things . The only issue I had with it was that some chapters, especially the one about space travel , were too short. All and all I highly recommend this book if you have even a passing interest in exploration .

[Michaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good, just your typical Barnes and Nobel, surface level nonfiction book. I read it aloud to fam and they liked learning some of the tidbits in it.

[Steffen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Light entertainment

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

sehr interessantes und aufschlussreiches buch, jedoch hauptsächlich nur auf europäische Endecker bezogen und nicht international was ich besser gefunden hätte.