Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before | Tony Horwitz

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before | Tony Horwitz | Great laid back, meandering read

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Blue Latitudes: Bo...

	Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before Tony Horwitz, 2002 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 93 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Looking for an easy-going but comprehensive chronicle of Cook's journeys?

During a round-the-world trip, I travelled to Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Bora Bora and Easter Island. I came across lots of places visited by Captain Cook or otherwise connected with him, as well as plenty of monuments with snippets of information about his journeys. I was interested to learn more, but at the same time wanted to avoid academic histories. This book was recommended by my guidebook, and it was perfect. Tony Horwitz combines a chronicle of Cook's journeys in the Pacific with his own experiences of modern-day travel in some of the same regions. It's light-hearted and entertaining, as well as being interesting and informative. It's travel literature, not a literary classic, but it's perfect if you're after an easy-going but comprehensive description of Cook's journeys. Definitely recommended.

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Great laid back, meandering read

Though the prose wanders a bit in places, one of the most entertaining travelogues I have read. Best read on a beach somewhere in the Pacific. The style is easygoing, but the author gets his point across. Read it!

as good as it gets!!

Call it what you want - history, travel, biography, adventure, science, humor, narrative - it really doesn't get any better than this. Not only will you be amazed and amused, you will marvel at the means by which the author and the subject survived their respective journeys.

A Perfect Traveling Companion or Armchair Traveling Book

I came across Tony Horwitz's BLUE LATITUDES in preparing for a trip to New Zealand and the "West Island" (Australia). Having enjoyed Horwitz's CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC, I was delighted to take this book along for the long flights ahead. Like CONFEDERATES, BLUE LATITUDES is structured as a modern-day dialogue with history: between Horwitz's historical narratives of Cook's amazing 18th-century journeys are interspersed Horwitz's own adventures on Cook's trail, usually accompanied by his Australian friend, Roger.

The well delivered, brief historical narratives give the reader new to Cook's travels a wonderful synopsis of the explorer's journeys, his crews' hardships, and their "first contacts" with the peoples of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as their encounters with the peoples of the North American northern Pacific rim, some of whom were already dealing with the Russians.

(If the adventures seem vaguely familiar, it may be because you have seen the space-opera equivalent in STAR TREK. In reading this book, you'll understand why it was that Captain Kirk accompanied landing parties--shouldn't the captain stay with his ship and his men?--and why the anonymous "Red Shirt" was usually killed upon arrival.)

A recurring theme throughout the book is how Cook's travels wrought change--invariably for the worse--upon all the places he and his crews visited, bringing disease and initiating the breakdown of traditional societies. But Horwitz also casts a favorable light on Cook's bravery, his outstanding achievements in navigation, and his spirit of exploration. Horwitz really tries, even if ultimately it alludes him, to understand Cook as a person: his personality, his motivations, his outlook on life. In the end, it is Cook's zeal for exploration that drives Horwitz's admiration. Horwitz believes this spirit of exploration has already captured the imagination of his own child; he hopes, and I hope, that that spirit will live to give rise to new voyages of discovery on earth and in space.

If there is anything that detracts from one's enjoyment, it's just the reality that so many of these Pacific locations, which have long stirred romantic reveries for Westerners, have been despoiled of much of their beauty and traditional ways of life. Horwitz doesn't stir up much interest in the reader to visit many of these places, at least the small Pacific islands. It's hard to say if there isn't something Horwitz overlooked there. Too, I had wished that Horwitz had made his way to Antarctica; I would have enjoyed his reflections on life in a scientific station. The consolation prize was that his droll friend Roger did get there and had an adventure of his own. I'll leave that amusing tidbit for you to discover.

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