Second in a series of lively, short biographies of great explorers. French explorer and naval officer Jean-Francois de la Perouse (1741-88) was, after James Cook, the greatest explorer of the Pacific in the 18th-century. On a three-year expedition, La Perouse discovered and mapped the coasts of California, Alaska, and Siberia, continuing to Easter Island and Hawaii and Botany Bay, Australia -- before his ships were shipwrecked in a storm en route to the Solomon Islands.  (PAC213, $24.95)