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

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before | Tony Horwitz | To boldly write what has been not written before...

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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

A Modern Journey with Perspective through the Blue Latitudes

Thank you Tony Horwitz for this humourous, interesting, exhaustively researched, almost brilliant revelation of how 18th Century European culture met and changed forever the various cultures of the Pacific. It is a book about one of the greatest if not the greatest explorers of all time (James Cook), the achievements of whom Horwitz places into a modern context without any obvious bias other than his obvious admiration of the man. If you want to be entertained, educated, even inspired, then read this book and keep it on your shelf.

To boldly write what has been not written before...

If you don't know your Captain Cook history this book will give you the "lite" version along with a great travelog of the South Pacific. I used to long to visit Tonga, Tahiti, Hawaii no longer. Maybe there is an Island Paradise left to visit, but it sure seems like it has died and gone. To have been on one of those first trips would truely have been to have died and gone to heaven for those sailors.

Cook clearly has had all of the evils of the modern world attached to him by the natives. It's really too bad, as being the first, and the big name he got the blame. But really, most of the really bad stuff happened afterwards. And blame Manifest Destiny and Colonialization for the big evils. Diseases, well, there is hardly any shame here because at the time, Europeans didn't really understand the transmission either.

Great summer beach read. (Probably at your local lake vs at your South Sea Island "paradise".)

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An Entertaining Telling of the Adventures of Captain James Cook

I don't know anything, and acknowledging this often works to my advantage. For example, I am able to choose my reading material by what is discounted. The expanse of my ignorance is boundless, so the odds are good that the sale bin will always harbor some book that can annex a little new information for my benefit. One such example is Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz. All I that knew of the adventures of Captain Cook aboard the Endeavor and the Resolution was what I had gleaned from the meager tags associated with public museum exhibits here and there -- and secondarily from having seen Mutiny on the Bounty. Blue Latitudes helped me fill in a lot of the other details.

This is a somewhat Brysonesque telling of James Cook's travels. The narration oscillates between Cook's story and Horwitz's own visits to some of the same places: Tahiti, Tonga, Fiji, Niue, Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, etc. The author presents an interesting mix of history and contemporary travelogue and critique that blurs the line betwixt a scholarly monograph and infotainment. Horwitz's format may make this book more accessible to a broader sample of readers than a drier, more academic exposition would be.

I am no Cook historian, so I am in no position to judge the rigor of the author's research and presentation. From where I am sitting, this is a big, dense book, well-indexed, and it has satisfied my interest in Cook for a while. More often than not, books of this type send me to a follow-up source, but that is not the case with Blue Latitudes. Horwitz, as a former foreign correspondent, seems to have covered all the angles quite well. What I am not so sure about is the authenticity of the conversations that Horwitz reports with those he meets at various Cook-related localities. Everywhere that Tony Horwitz and his buddies go there are philosophers -- museum curators, bartenders, bikers and idle loiters -- who not only seem to know all about Cook but that have given the man and his travels enough thought to have applied what they have learned to their own lives. It's as though everyone the author talked to is a Jeopardy contestant! Not being able to believe these stories somewhat detracted from their enjoyment (but only a little).

If you want to learn a lot about the Tale of Captain Cook, including the titillating details of his crews contacts with lusty locals (nudge nudge wink wink) and be entertained by humorous stories of the frustration of contemporary travel, then I think you will like Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz. I am looking forward to other Horwitz books making it to the bargain bin.

P.S. More of the story about the contentious arrow alleged to be made from Cook's bone can be found by visiting the web site of the Captain Cook Society, mentioned in the book.

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On the path of Cook

To start with let me say if you enjoy Bill Bryson's travelogues then you will like Blue Latitudes (Or Into The Blue as it is titled in Australia). Horwitz has that same ability to describe a location and find the humorous in the life of the locals (The Cooktown Qld Festival is a standout).

What makes the Blue Latitudes different from a Bill Bryson tale is that rather than concentrating on a geographic location, Blue Latitudes is more a study of the effect that a rather remarkable man - James Cook - had upon the diverse geographical locales, which he discovered (and also upon the places from which he hailed).

Cook was one of the greatest sailors and navigators that has ever lived and Horwitz's description of life upon a 18th century naval vessel and the conditions (including extended journeys in both the Artic and Antarctica) leave the reader in admiration of his skills and resilience. However as the author investigates the locales that he discovered (for European's) the more we see how two centuries of exploitation of the local population has seen his reputation reduced to that of the pathfinder for subsequent invasions.

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