Here are two children scrambling about in 1600 in the shop of a Dutch spectacle maker and, in their games, putting together two lenses to produce the first telescope. Balboa crawls over a mountain range, hacking his way through a rain forest, until after days of ''many adventures and great privation'' he stares at the Has a watch driven by a spring that the Emperor wants to see. The 16th-century Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, after 20 years of nearly fruitless effort in China on behalf of his orderĪnd his faith, makes his way at last into the presence of the Emperor (a ''pathological recluse,'' shut off in the Forbidden City, served by numberless wives, scores of concubines, uncounted eunuchs) only because he There are a multiplicity of characters, diverse situations, an infinite variety of searches and excursions. In one way, this is an adventure story, sustained by that continuing interplay of driving energy, bold personality, outlandish occasion and recurringĪccident that supplies the momentum for the picaresque novel.

In ''The Discoverers'' he takes his longest, widest look at ''man's search to know his world and himself.'' As the title suggests, the book is built on the record of many individuals as they made their wayīy faith, will, chance, grim determination or careful planning into some unknown territory.

He is equally at home with the pungentīrief reflection and the instructive grand survey. The understanding of the American experience, he has revealed the capacity to assemble great caches of evidence and work them into large-scale structures of well-ordered, fast moving, vivid narration. And throughout his later writing, much of it devoted to enlarging Of Congress, has demonstrated his ability to bring familiar information into fresh combinations and, from his new arrangements, to draw out unexpected and suggestive findings. Rom his first book, ''The Mysterious Science of the Law,'' written more than 40 years ago, Daniel J. NovemFrom Experience to Experiment By ELTING E.

Daniel boorstin the discoverers