James Cook's three epic journey's in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. When he embarked for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in 1779, Cook had explored more of the earth's surface than anyone in history.

Adventuring in the captain's wake, Tony Horwitz relives his journeys and explores their legacy. He recaptures the rum-and-lash world of eighteenth century seafaring gang members, and the king of Tonga. Accompanied by a carousing Australian mate, he meets Miss Tahiti, visits the roughest bar in Alaska, and uncovers the secret behind the red-toothed warriors of Savage Island.

Throughout, Horwitz also searches for Cook the man: a restless prodigy who fled his peasant boyhood, and later the luxury of Georgian London, for the privation and peril of sailing off the edge of the map.

Read by Daniel Gerroll

Horwitz starts his journey by sailing on a replica of Cook's first ship Endurance to get a feel for 18th Century shipboard life. He then spends most of the remaining time traipsing around the Pacific with his Australian friend Roger, who provides the same kind of narrative counterpoint as Robert Lee Hodge did in "Attic." Horwitz documents the changes that have occurred in Oceania because of Cook's "discoveries" and interviews numerous islanders to find out how they feel about Cook's legacy. The results are often surprising and enlighteneing.

Having said all of that, "Blue Latitudes" is not a classic on the order of "Attic." The narrative is a lengthy at nearly 450 pages and is sluggish at times. Companion Roger is not nearly as interesting a character as was Hodge and the moments of uproarious humor that made "Attic" so entertaining are mostly missing this time out. Nevertheless, "Blue Latitudes" is still a well-written and worthwhile read for those with an interest in the subject matter.


"Hardly Even Comprehensible"   October 25, 2002
 28 out of 29 found this review helpful

For various reasons, there continues to be substantial interest in great explorers such as Earnest Shackleton, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Robert Falcon Scott, and James Cook. This the first of two books about Cook which I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed. (The other is Vanessa Collingridge's Captain Cook: A Legacy Under Fire.) They discuss a common subject but from different perspectives. I highly recommend both. According to Horwitz, Cook set out on various voyages (1768-1789) uncertain of eventual destinations and traveled more than 200,000 miles while dependent (by today's standards) on crude, indeed primitive navigation instruments but sustained by his superior seamanship skills. Of special interest to me is the fact that Horwitz traced many of the same voyages to Bora Bora, Australia, Savage Island, Tonga, Alaska, and Hawaii. He shares his own reactions to what these areas have become, most in sharp contrast to the "pure state of Nature" as Cook once described it. Horwitz's extensive research suggests that many of those whom Cook encountered correctly suspected (and feared) that their lives and communities would never be the same after Cook's "discovery" of them. Beyond the wealth of information this book provides, it is that rare achievement among works of nonfiction: a page-turner.


Blue latitutes not Cook history   January 14, 2003
 19 out of 19 found this review helpful

I was expecting more info on Captain Cook and his exploits and not so much on the author and his buddy flying around visiting depressing islands and talking to people who had nothing to do with Cook and what he accomplished. The book was a rambling travelog and not much value if you are interested in what happened over 200 years ago. Although there was some interesting history included, it makes up less than half the contents of the book.
The author missed an opportunity by not expanding on what Cook did, how he did it, the tools he used, and how hard it was to do in the world in which he lived.


Something for Everyone--I Just LOVE It!   June 3, 2003
 18 out of 27 found this review helpful

Blue Latitudes, on Capt. James Cook & Crew's three voyages in the Pacific northwest and beyond, is simply the most interesting and engaging work of nonfiction (or "creative nonfiction") I have read in the past five years. The one before it was Horwitz's last book, Confederates in the Attic-and while that was riveting for me on a personal level, as I grew up in the South, Blue Latitudes is the better book, more universal and accessable, a mixture of first-person journalism with strong narrative technique (creative nonfiction) and history, which is presented so smoothly as to make you amazed you read this thing in a weekend and couldn't put it down, and then you get to the end and notice from the Selected Bibliography that this is also a major work of scholorship-the kind that makes Academics jealous because it's better than they are without being boring and stuffy. I'll bet it makes popular travel writers/participatory journalists like Paul Theroux or Geroge Plimpton envious because Horwitz can do research and they can't-and as in his earlier book he comes across as a likeable guy, not a self-important megalomaniac.

This is the kind of book that, for me at least, comes along once about every 3-5 years-if you're like me, and read widely and often, chances are you have some friends and family who do also, and you want them all to read it, you want to be the one to give it to them, holiday or no, which is what I did with Confederates in the Attic and is also what I'm doing with Blue Latitudes. Tony Horwitz already has a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism, for his early '90s work as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal on the first Gulf War; he deserves another for this, in history.

And as I'm obviously giving this book the big Two Thumbs up and Then Some, and spending 1000 words doing it, let's just go on with this little line of thought for a moment, shall we? We shall. We were reading it at 4 am, wishing it were closer to Father's Day-and not just our father, either! One can teach it to high school students. Beautiful women can read it while laying out sipping Daquiris on the beach this summer. Grad students can use it in their dissertations, and even idiots can enjoy it. We were flipping through our phone book and didn't find a person therein who wouldn't dig it all the way to Tahiti and back in a pea-green boat, even those who care little or nothing for books on travel or history.

And I admit that before I picked it up, Captain Cook and his voyages had never been that important to me, or seen by me as having literally shaped the modern world as we know it-nor was I aware that Star Trek has been ripping off details from Cook for years. I was at one time very interested in the Franklin Expedition, and in the past few years the culture's had Shackleton Fever, but it took the writing of Tony Horwitz to really get me Cooking-and it's amazing how fascinating it all is, no matter who you are or what you normally like to read. It's as good as Six Feet Under on one of those nights where the episode lasts the full hour.

James Cook truly did chart new territories, going where no European had gone before-and he did it in his 50s, which was of course elderly in the late 1700s, in conditions that make a jail cell look like San Francisco Bay without the fog. Yep, Horwitz has a real prediliction for examining Hardcore Human Experience-and while he does so with the upmost taste and delicacy (which often gives the writing a certain ironic hilarity), you'd be hard-pressed (pun intended) to find an S & M site on the Internet where they get into stuff like the voyages of Cook's Endeavour. And it's all right here in this book-and sex, you wanted that, too, right? Well, read the chapter about when they go to Tahiti. They had more fun than Marlon Brando in the 70s. And gave the "new" world all the "old" had to offer-to the point at which the population of said island was reduced by some 95% in the next hundred years. Indeed, on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, Cook's voyages define for Horwitz the literal beginnings of global Eurocentric hegemony and homogony-but the sex sure seemed like a good idea at the time.

That's what Sir Joseph Banks, the youthful naturalist, thought, at least-he loved it, and you gentlemen will read the book and fancy yourself Sir Joseph in Tahiti circa 1770. You ladies out there, you want him, too! You won't want Cook, but you'll really get into the toughness of it-well, I take it back-a woman like Melanie Hassler would desire Cook, a man who makes Shackleton and Franklin and Bering and Amundsen put together look like an uncooked hot dog. There's violence in this adventure story, too-I mean really. It's got you hanging on every word-because just about every word is true, it's wild, all the popular genres rolled into one, with NASA parallels thrown in to boot! You'll want to buy it for your Hairdresser. Your Dentist. Your Boss. And if these are all the same person (could be), you'll start in on your kids.

Because while I could step back and really analyze how brilliant is Horwitz's own account of shadowing (in his own ways) Cook's journeys, and noting changes, etc. (and making a lot of sapient observations between the lines as suggestions, too), I think the most remarkable thing about this book is how accessable and engaging and, yes, fun it can be to read a book on history-when it's written like this, for this, as I've shown, is about a little of everything. And you'll be surprised, as I was, at how much you'll learn-major facts, geography, dates, names, events, as well as tidbits that bring to life, by microcosm, the very different worlds of the past in a past where there were, for the very last time-different worlds.

1000 words, folks, and what I've said ain't the half of it. But go buy it or check it out and go read it-you'll wish every history book read like a book by Tony Horwitz.

Or, who knows, maybe you won't. But I feel sure that you believe that I do.