Joyce E. Chaplin: ROUND ABOUT THE EARTH

Traveling around the world was initially one of the most dangerous enterprises a person could try. It was a “war of attrition against the vastness of the globe”. These early circumnavigators had little idea of where they were going, suffered from disease and fear and encountered hostile native peoples. Yet by the 1700s, travel around the world had become almost commonplace and certainly less dangerous. It was a dramatic evolution in how people thought about the world. Tonight on Inquiry we speak with JOYCE E. CHAPLIN, the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University. She has written the first history of circumnavigation that includes everything from Magellan to the contemporary spaceflight. ROUND ABOUT THE EARTH: CIRCUMNAVIGATION FROM MAGELLAN TO ORBIT is a wonderful, thought-provoking and thrilling history of the geo-drama that is traveling around the globe.