Covering all aspects of global exploration, from Antarctica to the North Pole, The Oxford Companion to World Exploration examines the lives and expeditions of heroic and influential explorers. This coverage includes biographies, including Lewis and Clark, Ferdinand Magellan, Cheng Ho, Hernán Cortés, Ibn Battuta, Vitus Bering, and Christopher Columbus; national expeditions, including Portuguese, British, French, Chinese, Dutch, and Spanish; and navigational and marine sciences, such as navigational techniques, ancient and medieval navigation, ocean currents and winds, longitude, cartography, and aerial surveys. The Companion's temporal scope ranges from the ancient cultures of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Byzantium, China, Polynesia, and Rome, through to modern space exploration. The articles have been written by leading scholars from across the globe, utilizing the most current scholarship in the field of exploration studies.

The Companion contains 800 entries, supplemented by 150 black-and-white and 50 full-color photographs and maps. Annotated primary source materials, such as travel logs and personal letters, supplement select biographies. Each entry is signed by a leading scholar in the field, contains a bibliography for further reading, and is cross-referenced to other useful points of interest within the Companion. Published in association with the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Companion reproduces more than 100 images from that institution's world-renowned collection.