The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989 Page: 189

Book Reviews
NORMAN D. BROWN, Editor
New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery. By
William H. Goetzmann. (New York: Viking, 1986. Pp. xiv+528.
Preface, prologue, illustrations, acknowledgments, bibliographical
notes, index, maps. $24.95.)
Since the beginning of his academic career, William H. Goetzmann
of the University of Texas at Austin has been intrigued by the history of
exploration. His work is especially interesting because he has steadily
broadened his horizon to look not only at the United States but also at
other unexplored lands in the nineteenth century. Moreover, he has
skillfully portrayed, examined, and characterized the personalities,
motivations, and contributions of his leading actors, and placed them
in their cultural, aesthetic, and cartographic environments as well. He
has always set his work in the largest intellectual context. Little wonder
then that his books have won prizes and attracted a large reading
public.
New Lands, New Men conforms to the Goetzmann model. It is bril-
liantly written. Goetzmann speaks with so much authority and control
that the casual reader may fail to notice that there are no footnotes,
only end of chapter references that set out bibliographical guidance for
further reading, as well as authorities quoted and utilized. The book is
impressive in other ways. Goetzmann has gathered a superb collection
of illustrations and maps that range from Paul B. Du Chaillu's The
Gorilla (a simply wonderful piece that should someday be published
along with Du Chaillu's familiar short story) to Frederick E. Church's
Aurora Borealis, and from Baron de Lahontan's Map of the Long Rivers to
James T. Gardner's Topographical Map of the Wasatch Mountains.
The substance of Goetzmann's book is what he calls the Second Great
Age of Discovery, roughly the last two hundred years, a period when
the aim of explorers was not so much to open areas for economic ex-
ploitation but to measure and map, find and describe, test and verify
existing theories, and ultimately catalogue the world's hitherto un-