Pacific passions

In this sweeping narrative, author Frank Sherry tells the enthralling story of one of the most exciting periods of human discovery: the first 250 years of European exploration of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific covers one third of the planet, but until 1513 no white man even knew it existed. When the Spanish adventurer Vasco Nunez de Balboa emerged on an open Panamanian mountaintop and beheld a seemingly endless expanse of calm water, he unwittingly began a new age of exploration. The prize that spurred the various European seafaring countries was control of the fabled Spice Islands. Beginning…