Explorers' Sketchbooks /anglais Hardcover – September 24, 2016

Explorers’ Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery & Adventure is a stunningly beautiful and fascinating book by Kari Herbert and Huw Lewis-Jones. This is one of those books you will fall in love with within moments and want to linger over. It will sit on your side table for months so you can pick it up and page through the illustrations and stop and look at one in great detail, while you imagine the explorer sitting in a tent at the end of the day, jotting down impressions of the day and perhaps sketching in a small illustration of something seen while trekking.Before Go-Pro, iPhones, and tablets, people who traveled wrote down what happened in notebooks, capturing their impressions, making sketches, even pulling out watercolors to illustrate the more glorious fauna and flora.These notebooks are tattered and torn, thick with usage, their pages wrinkled and covered with ink and stains. There is romance just in looking at them, these slender books full of adventure, science, and wonder. Consider the word of Ghillean Francs, “Notebooks are the essential part of my exploring kit. Other things of course are important in a practical sense…and each might mean the difference between life and death in the jungle. But, in terms of making a genuine contribution to knowledge, the careful marks that you make in a journal will be the things that outlive you.”And Kari Herbert and Huw Lewis-Jones have collected a book sampling from seventy of these explorers. Each explorer is presented with a quote, a short biography, and a few illustrative pictures or in a few cases, photos of the stacks of their journals. I also love the inclusion of relatively unknown explorers like Olivia Tonge who at the age of fifty decided to travel to India and explore and no one could stop her. Her illustrations are exquisite and bizarre, with two frogs sharing their page with a pair of earrings that hold a forehead chain and a large, intricate nose ring.Of course, this book fascinated me from the outset with a comprehensive selection of Arctic and Antarctic explorers including Robert Falcon Scott, shown above on the left. Scott is a special favorite of mine for his eloquent writing, his commitment to science above all, continuing to sledge with his samples even though they probably contributed to his death. He was headstrong and perhaps foolish, unwilling to sacrifice dozens of dogs to reach the Pole. The map on the right is of John Speke and James Grant’s trip from Zanzibar to the Nile, identifying Lake Victoria as the headwaters.In addition to illustrations from the sketchbooks and the biographies, the authors added a list of recommended books to read about each of the explorers featured. It’s a reading list full of books I want to read.I love this book. I look at the pictures and imagine when they were made, I look at the journals and picture paraffin or whale-oil illuminating their tents piled with furs for warmth or open to catch a cool evening breeze at an oasis in the desert, in the jungle, on a mountain…challenging the elements by day and capturing the experience before resting for the night. Their own handwriting, their own sketches bring them alive in my imagination. And then there is the language. Some of them are so poetic. Like Colin Thubron who wrote, “Sometimes a journey arises out of hope and instinct, the heady conviction, as your finger travels along the map: Yes, here and here…and here. These are the nerve-ends of the world.” Doesn’t that make you want to know more about him?I also think it is an ideal present. After all, who will love this book? Artists, historians, science lovers, travel and adventure lovers, armchair travelers, naturalists, geologists, botanists, anthropologists, lovers of the unknown and mysterious. Who in the world will not love this book? That is the harder question.

Huw Lewis-Jones and Kari Herbert are to be highly commended on this fine book. This gorgeous compendium is well researched and beautifully presented. I cannot imagine a more perfect book. If I were alone on a desert island, this is the only book I would want with me to fill my days. Why stop with Five Stars? This one surely deserves Ten.The sketchbooks of these explorers are nothing short of incredible. The art works depicted are stunning, some detailed, some simple, all beautiful. There are explorers we all know such as Thor Heyerdahl, Audubon, Meriwether Lewis, and Carl Linnaeus but there are many more who are less well known. It is a joy to discover these men and women in this book. A nice touch is that the book is arranged in alphabetical order making it easy to find a given explorer.I am drawn to the Egyptian art of Gertrude Bell and Hector Horeau. And I should not leave out Howard Carter's precise watercolor depictions from Egypt nor the detailed and lovely botanical works by Margaret Mee and Maria Sibylla Merian. Edward Norton filled sketchbooks with exquisite watercolors of botanicals and landscapes from his travels in the Himalayas for the Natural History Museum in London. I could go on and on!I not only never tire of looking at the art, I never tire of telling people about this book. I've given one as a gift and am considering getting more to give as Christmas gifts. This is a book for long evenings at home and you will want to arrange your calendar so that you have quiet times to enjoy it. My hope is that the authors will follow this book with another one like it.

Amazing! This is an exceptional book, on so many levels. The abundant visuals are presented in stunning detail, and the accompanying text isfascinating and astute. I found this book in a local Indie book store, and gave it as a gift........and immediately needed to acquire a copy for myself from Amazon. I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about visual journals and diaries, but this book is a total WOW. It has totally added to myknowledge about personal archives and provided me insights about endless topics, far beyond the usual. This is a book that you will look at again and again; and the visuals and personal stories will stay with you. For anyone who has ever thought about starting or keeping a sketchbook or visual diary -- this will get you started, and inspire you to keep going, and going, and going.

This is an amazing book. I got it because I like to keep a sketchbook and I find it inspiring to see what explorers' have done. My only complaint is that the page size means that many of the reproduced pages from journals are rather small - I feel like I need to get a small magnifying glass to really appreciate the detail in many. However, I think the publisher opted not to go with a large coffee table format in order to keep costs down and make the book more accessible to people. I plan to purchase another copy as a gift for someone (with a magnifier ;-)This is a book I will return to just to browse through it for ideas.

I got this for my son who has a degree in history from U of M and he really enjoyed it. I have to admit I got stuck in it before I wrapped it up for him :-)!

Beautiful book. Smaller than I thought it would be; I thought it was a giant coffee table book. It's thick however, and the images are amazing. A fair price for a beautiful book.

Fabulous Book, I just received it and is fascinating to see al these diaries and sketchbooks with watercolours and writing.If you like me love to read about Explorers biographies and adventures this is a must buy book.

A great reference to the importance of sketchbooks to document early expeditions. Very nice book!

I always wanted a decoder ring. Loved compasses, loved adventure. And maps! Forget it! Amazing.This is a real-life adventure book. Enjoyed the heck out of it.

I received this as a Christmas gift. Two areas of interest - sketching and explorers in one book! Highly recommended as an insight into how explorers recorded their observations. One reviewer commented on the binding - I think this is a design choice by the publishers to make the book feel more like a real sketchbook.

If you have any interest whether it’s Scott’s artic exploration or the discovery of the treasures of the pyramids it’s a must

Bought as a Christmas present for a dear friend and was there when she unwrapped it. Lots of "Ooo's" ensued as she looked through the pages. Followed by a number of "Did you know..."s. I also had a quick look through and was very impressed with the content and illustrations. She was delighted with the book and is enjoying now reading through it at leisure. (I have baggsed borrowing the book after she has finished with it!)

This is a beautiful book to browse through for inspiration, both for the intrepid travelers and explorers featured, and for the many and varied examples of their notebooks and artwork. Each chapter is quite short but sufficient as they are all well-known, it is the artwork which is exceptional.