About the book: 1969 / In the German Democratic Republic, the name of Erich Rackwitz is familiar to all young lovers of geography. “Foreign Paths, Unfamiliar Seas” was published in Leipzig in 1959 and very quickly became a reference book for future travelers and sailors. The first edition sold out instantly, and the same fate awaited all seven reprints that appeared in the GDR in subsequent years. Erich Rackwitz is a famous master of youth literature in the popular genre. He received recognition at a competition held in Berlin in 1960, where he was awarded the first prize. This book is being published for the first time in the Soviet Union. The book by Erich Rackwitz leads the reader along those paths that gradually became the through highways of our planet, and along unknown seas, now caught in coordinate networks and placed on the most accurate maps. This is an entertaining encyclopedia of geographical discoveries, entertaining because it reveals the hidden meaning of events during which the horizons of the inhabitants of our planet steadily expanded.