North American Exploration, Volume 2: A Continent Defined

This second volume in the North Amerina Exploration series consists of six chapters, all written by academics at American and Canadian universities, dealing chronologically with Spanish exploration in the 16th century to Russian and British explorations of the Pacific coast in the late 18th century. Other essays deal with aspects of French and British activities in the interior of North America. As the editor notes in his excellent introduction, what ties these chapters together is that the initial period of discovery was now replaced by a scientific understanding of North America derived from the European Enlightenment.