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Summary: Captain Cook
Comment: Fast-moving and fascinating account of Captain Cook's three around-the-world voyages, culminating in his death at the hands of Hawaiian peoples who apparently mistook him for a god based on his ill-timed arrival and departure schedule.
The concept of leaving on just one 3-year trip in uncharted lands so far from home and family and communication with them seems even more astounding and heroic today in the age of always available, always on communication. Of course, Cook and his crew weren't always heroes, displaying at times the reflexive racism and cultural arrogance of the age of Empire that spawned the exploration in the first place. However, it is interesting to watch Cook's attitudes change and mature during the voyages.
You may want to cross-reference to Tony Horwitz' Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before which I also reviewed. Horwitz applies his witty and accessible style to a popular cultural, anthropological, historical, and gastronomical view of Cook's travel stops and his impact on them.
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Summary: Fascinating account of Cook's voyages into the Pacific
Comment: This book covered Cook's 3 voyages into the Pacific. Cook's drive to explore new lands and interact with the people that he met along the way was fascinating. This book did not try to judge the actions of Cook and his crew, but rather chronicled the good and the bad, describing the various attitudes of several of the crew members as taken from their diaries and accounts of the voyages.
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Summary: The Arrogance of Hindsight
Comment: This is an anthropologically informed history of James Cook's three voyages to the Pacific. If you are looking for a biography of James Cook, a general history of Cook's voyages, or a maritime history, this book is not for you.
The anthropological approach seems perfectly suited to these voyages since they included a number of first contacts between Polynesian and European civilization. In some cases, especially in his discussion of the artwork and the scientific approaches of 18th century Europeans in confronting Polynesia, Thomas is engaging. However.....
As some other reviewers have noted, there is an air of anachronistic academic disdain that permeates the narrative and distracts the reader from engaging the subject. I'm not quite sure what Thomas's point is in much of the contempt he has for his subject. For example, he will deride Cook et al. for misinterpreting a certain aspect of Polynesian society, and tisk at the ignorance and cultural insensitivity that supposedly malinformed this misinterpretation. After all this, you'd think he'd supply better interpretations, right? Well, sometimes yes, with all the arrogance that 250 years of hindsight will buck you up with. Yet strangely, quite a bit of this book is devoted to his own guesses and speculating about Polynesian society. Perhaps these guesses are informed by that 250 extra years of scholarship, but they are often poorly argued and unconvincing.
Read a more standard history of Cook before you read this, and then be prepared to wade through quite a bit of the ideological sludge that sullies some interesting material.
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Summary: A good history
Comment: Fewer things are better than a good sea story dealing with unexplored regions of the world. Captain James Cook's British Naval expeditions in the late 1700's were some of the last expeditions to the unexplored parts of the world. For introducing the subject and telling a good story, Thomas does an excellent job of introducing the reader to the inherent problems in leading a naval and scientific expedition and first contact with Pacific Islanders.
In many ways, today's outer space missions are less complicated than Cook's expeditions.
The anthropology sections of this book are the weakest sections, but there are simply few ways to understand the native Pacific islanders of Hawaii and Polynesia and the Maori peoples of New Zealand and Aborigines of Australia.
Cook's legacy is somewhat mixed in the Pacific basin, though to his credit, he handled first contact issues as well as he probably could. His death that resulted from an altercation with some Hawaiian tribe members was a bit of a tragedy, for few of his generation had as much patience in dealing with the inherent issues of Western and native interaction.
For the reader wanting a solid introduction to one of history's greatest explorers and one of the greatest sea stories, this is a worthwhile book.
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Summary: The People on the Beach
Comment: Before reading this book, most of what I knew about Captain Cook was from high school (not much) and from a vacation or two in Hawaii complete with visits to historic sites. I saw it at the library and checked it out because I am enrolled in a "Pacific Islanders in the U.S." course at my local junior college, and because I'm planning another vacation in Hawaii and want to feel more grounded in the history of the place while I'm there.
I thought the book was great. It really cut through a lot of the mythology that surrounds what most of us are taught about Cook, to the real person, with failings as well as strengths. What I loved was I felt I got both perspectives, Cook's as well as the point of view of the People he encountered on the islands. One thing I got from the book is that Cook missed a lot. His journal records his perspective, but as well-meaning as it might be, that perspective was narrow and often limited by his own background. The island kingdoms he encountered, in Tonga, Hawaii and others were politically complex, and socially and culturally rich. Power plays were being made, not only by Cook, but by the People on the beach. I thought the presentation was balanced, and fascinating, and I am grateful for having read a book that allows me to think about this moment in history, and the islands themselves, in a broader way.
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