is the history of human discovery. Discovery in all its many forms are present - exploration, scientific, medical, mathematical and the more theoretical ones such as time, evolution, plate tectonics and relativity. He praises the inventive, human mind and its eternal quest to discover the universe and our place in it.
In "A Personal Note to the Reader" Boorstin writes, "My hero is Man, the Discoverer. The world we now view from the literate West...had to be opened by countless Columbuses. In the deep recesses of the past, they remain anonymous." The structure is topical and chronological, beginning in the prehistoric era in Babylon and Egypt.