Matthew Lockwood
Amazon Book Description
Unfurling a tapestry of surprising and historically overlooked figures spanning forty centuries and six continents, historian Matthew Lockwood narrates lives filled with imagination and wonder, curiosity, connection, and exchange. Familiar icons of exploration like Pocahontas, Columbus, Sacagawea, and Captain Cook find new company in the untold stories of people usually denied the title “explorers,” including immigrants, indigenous interpreters, local guides, and fugitive slaves. He highlights female voyagers like Gudrid Far-Traveler and Freydís Eiríksdóttir, Viking women who sailed to North America in 1000 AD, and Mary Wortley Montagu, whose pioneering travels to Constantinople would lead to the development of the world’s first smallpox vaccine. Figures like Ghulam Rassul Galwan, a guide for European travelers in the Himalayas, reveal the hidden labor, expertise, and local enthusiasm behind many grand stories of discovery. Other characters, like David Dorr, a man born into slavery in New Orleans who embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe and Egypt, embody discovery and wonder as universal parts of the human condition.
As Lockwood makes clear, people of every background imagine new worlds. Adventurers from every corner of the globe search for the unknown and try to understand it, remaking the world and themselves in the process. Exploration is for everyone who sets off into the unknown. It is the inheritance of all.
Reviews
“Mr. Lockwood takes a positive attitude, presenting tales of unsung (and under-sung) historical figures… by illuminating the crisscross nature of peregrination through the stories of people who engaged in it, Explorers achieves its hedgehog end.”
― Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal
“In this expansive and compassionate account, we find the lost voices of Indigenous guides, female voyagers, immigrants, and kidnapped and enslaved persons whose experiences have long been overlooked. Explorers: A New History is a long overdue reckoning that strips away the old trope of heroic conquerors without losing a sense of awe, curiosity, and wonder.”
― Melissa L. Sevigny, author of Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon
“Wonderfully insightful and entertaining…gives voice to those who have been overlooked for too long and without whom the history of exploration is far less interesting and consequential.”
― Eric Jay Dolin, author of Left for Dead and Black Flags, Blue Waters
“Expansive and playful, this book is a mediation on the dense history of human urge to explore. Matthew Lockwood brings together the globe in reminding us that there is no one time, one place, or one person with an exclusive pleasure of curiosity. A homage to the adventures of our world ancestors – and to our own.”
― Ruby Lal, author of Empress and Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan
“An examination of the travels of both famous and less-known individuals that seeks to redefine the meaning of exploration. As it thoughtfully demystifies and democratizes the concept of exploration, Lockwood’s book reminds readers that discovery itself is “not unidirectional and never belongs to a single group of people.””
― Kirkus Reviews
“A concise and appealing history.”
― Barrie Olmstead, Booklist
“A surprising history of exploration featuring a new cast including fugitives, indigenous pathfinders, and immigrants that celebrates the universal qualities of discovery.”
― Panio Gianopoulos, Next Big Idea Club
Some of the many past discussions and History Camp presentations we’ve had related to exploration and Indigenous people that are available to stream now in our archive:
[Recorded and posted on April 10, 2025.]