Written during his tenure as the Librarian of Congress, this superb work from Daniel Boorstin is an original, idiosyncratic history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover everything around him. Covering time, the earth and the seas, and nature and society, Boorstin gathers and analyzes stories of humankind's profound quest to understand our world and the cosmos, not only tracing man's insatiable need to know, but also the obstacles to discovery, and how the illusion of knowledge can impede innovation.

"A sumptuous, totally engaging panorama. No one who reads it will look at the chronicle of human ingenuity in the same way again."—David McCullough