The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
The year was 1765. Eminent botanist Philibert Commerson had just been appointed to a grand new expedition: the first French circumnavigation of the world. As the ships’ official naturalist, Commerson would seek out resources—medicines, spices, timber, food—that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire.
 
Jeanne Baret, Commerson’s young mistress and collaborator, was desperate not to be left behind. She disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant. The journey made the twenty-six-year-old, known to her shipmates as “Jean” rather than “Jeanne,” the first woman to ever sail around the globe. Yet so little is known about this extraordinary woman, whose accomplishments were considered to be subversive, even impossible for someone of her sex and class.
           
When the ships made landfall and the secret lovers disembarked to explore, Baret carried heavy wooden field presses and bulky optical instruments over beaches and hills, impressing observers on the ships’ decks with her obvious strength and stamina. Less obvious were the strips of linen wound tight around her upper body and the months she had spent perfecting her masculine disguise in the streets and marketplaces of Paris.
           
Expedition commander Louis-Antoine de Bougainville recorded in his journal that curious Tahitian natives exposed Baret as a woman, eighteen months into the voyage. But the true story, it turns out, is more complicated.
 
In The Discovery of Jeanne Baret, Glynis Ridley unravels the conflicting accounts recorded by Baret’s crewmates to piece together the real story: how Baret’s identity was in fact widely suspected within just a couple of weeks of embarking, and the painful consequences of those suspicions; the newly discovered notebook, written in Baret’s own hand, that proves her scientific acumen; and the thousands of specimens she collected, most famously the showy vine bougainvillea.
 
Ridley also richly explores Baret’s awkward, sometimes dangerous interactions with the men on the ship, including Baret’s lover, the obsessive and sometimes prickly naturalist; a fashion-plate prince who, with his elaborate wigs and velvet garments, was often mistaken for a woman himself; the sour ship’s surgeon, who despised Baret and Commerson; even a Tahitian islander who joined the expedition and asked Baret to show him how to behave like a Frenchman.
 
But the central character of this true story is Jeanne Baret herself, a working-class woman whose scientific contributions were quietly dismissed and written out of history—until now. Anchored in impeccable original research and bursting with unforgettable characters and exotic settings, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret offers this forgotten heroine a chance to bloom at long last.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe by Glynis Ridley

From reader reviews:

Tamera Duckett:

Here thing why this specific The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe are different and reputable to be yours. First of all examining a book is good nonetheless it depends in the content from it which is the content is as tasty as food or not. The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe giving you information deeper as different ways, you can find any reserve out there but there is no reserve that similar with The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe. It gives you thrill examining journey, its open up your personal eyes about the thing this happened in the world which is probably can be happened around you. You can actually bring everywhere like in park, café, or even in your way home by train. For anyone who is having difficulties in bringing the imprinted book maybe the form of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe in e-book can be your alternate.

Michael Banks:

Information is provisions for individuals to get better life, information presently can get by anyone at everywhere. The information can be a information or any news even a huge concern. What people must be consider any time those information which is in the former life are challenging to be find than now's taking seriously which one is acceptable to believe or which one the resource are convinced. If you get the unstable resource then you understand it as your main information we will see huge disadvantage for you. All those possibilities will not happen in you if you take The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe as the daily resource information.

Ariane Swanson:

You may spend your free time to see this book this e-book. This The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe is simple to deliver you can read it in the park your car, in the beach, train as well as soon. If you did not have much space to bring the printed book, you can buy typically the e-book. It is make you better to read it. You can save typically the book in your smart phone. Therefore there are a lot of benefits that you will get when one buys this book.

Ollie Nadeau:

What is your hobby? Have you heard that will question when you got college students? We believe that that question was given by teacher to their students. Many kinds of hobby, Every person has different hobby. And also you know that little person similar to reading or as looking at become their hobby. You must know that reading is very important in addition to book as to be the thing. Book is important thing to add you knowledge, except your current teacher or lecturer. You get good news or update regarding something by book. Numerous books that can you take to be your object. One of them is actually The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe.