A lively, sophisticated history of the search for the Northwest Passage during the Age of Enlightenment. Williams, a professor at the University of London and popular author on voyages of discovery, draws on research to present an overview of the early journeys, based on very limited geography and some strange ideas, that sought a sea route across temperate North America. They had some fantastic notions about the world -- and North American geography in particular before the 19th century -- that these voyages, once and for all, put to rest. Williams covers the early exploratory voyages along the western coast of Hudson Bay along with Bering's two Pacific voyages, and the voyages of Cook, Vancouver and other that charted the Pacific coast of the Americas.  (ARC128, $40.00)