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Loading... Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before (2002)by Tony Horwitz
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. loved this book. Horwitz exposes me to people I probably wouldn't otherwise encounter, like the "aryan" civil war freaks in his other book, the new zelanders who use the swastika symbol apall and fascinate at the same time. How do people come to think and act this way.. the book has some answers. But don't get the wrong idea, mostly it is equal parts humor and history lesson and all fun ( )
Tony Horwitz has done it again. In his earlier, riveting book, "Confederates in the Attic," he journeyed through the South to explore the rich and thorny legacy of the Civil War. With the same keen insight, open- mindedness and laugh-out-loud humor, he undertakes another daunting quest in "Blue Latitudes" -- to travel across the globe in search of the memory of Captain James Cook, the 18th century English explorer whose ambition led him, as he famously put it, "not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far I think it possible for man to go." Belongs to Publisher SeriesAwardsDistinctions
This book retraces the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who drew the map of the modern world. Captain James Cook's three epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. His ships sailed 150,000 miles, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Tasmania to Oregon, from Easter Island to Siberia. When Cook set off for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time of his violent death in Hawaii in 1779, the map of the world was substantially complete. Tony Horwitz vividly recounts Cook's voyages and the exotic scenes the captain encountered: tropical orgies, taboo rituals, cannibal feasts, human sacrifice. He also relives Cook's adventures by traveling in the captain's wake to such places as Tahiti, Savage Island, and the Great Barrier Reef along the way, he discovers Cook's embattled legacy in the present day. Signing on as a working crewman aboard a replica of Cook's vessel, Horwitz experiences the thrill and terror of sailing a tall ship. He also explores Cook the man: an impoverished farm boy who broke through the barriers of his class and time to become the greatest navigator in British history. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)910.92History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography and Travel History, geographic treatment, biography - Discovery. exploration Geographers, travellers, explorers regardless of country of originLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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