Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended, 11 Dec 2003
As a member of the Captain Cook Society I was asked to review Nicolas Thomas's new book on Captain Cook and his voyages. I found it very interesting indeed.
Thomas is Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and it is the interaction of people with which he is concerned in this book, the interaction between Cook and his crew (including the artists) and the indigenous people they encountered on the voyages. As Thomas explains in his introduction Cook's ". . . life is my lens, for a new look at these formative encounters" with other cultures. Thomas is not so much repeating the well known story of Cook and his exploration; rather he is examining the voyages from an anthropologist's viewpoint, being more concerned with the interaction of new cultures and people, than with the technological, geographical and navigational aspects.
Too often, when you read a biography of a long dead person, it is all too easy to keep in your mind the knowledge of what happens next. Most biographies start with the birth and end with the death. Thomas's book is slightly different in that immediately the reader is catapulted into the year 1767 and the preparations of the first voyage. As the name of the book implies, it is the voyages which tell the story; Cook's childhood and early career serve only as material which the reader is filled in on briefly, to explain how Cook got to be in charge of the Endeavour. Thomas tries to write without the benefit of hindsight, which to a large degree I believe he succeeds in.
I approached this book with anticipation but wondering why, and how, another book could be written on Cook, when there have been so many published beforehand. However, I feel Thomas adds something to the debate surrounding Cook's life as he reviews some of the aspects and events which I thought were set in stone and give them fresh consideration. After Cook's death, he was for a long time regarded as someone who had done no wrong. In recent years this opinion has been reversed, with the third voyage viewed as a trip during which Cook's mental decline is demonstrated.
Thomas considers these differing views and gives it what I consider to be an interesting summarisation.
One assumes academics will produce good books but that you need a dictionary beside you! It was refreshing to read a book which was written by a normal person! Yes, it was clear that the author was an academic but it was an easy and enjoyable book to read. I have only two minor complaints; first, it would have been nice to have had some of the paintings reproduced in colour as the descriptions are so multi-coloured. And secondly, I wish someone would invent a way of snuggling up to a hardback book in bed!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Re-Visiting Captain Cook, 7 Oct 2003
Nicholas Thomas has given sensitive and dscerning treatment to an old subject. His is not an historian's point of view but that of the anthropologist and social scientist seeking to re-construct how Cook's view of the world he was opening up changed over the course of his three voyages. He became ever more sensitive to the Europeans' impact on the peoples of the Pacific that he visited and this evolution is brilliantly captured in Nicholas Thomas' book. The book is also excellent history but that is merely an aside. It is, to this reviewer, one of the most thought-provoking books he has read in many years. It is also beautifully, if informally, written and is almost a page-turner. A great job and I hope the book does well.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book on Cook & gives Pacific Islander perspective too, 2 Feb 2006
By A Customer
This is a well-researched book, well-written for the average audience, but with the original thought and rigorous thoroughness we need from a scholar.
(All the geeky scholar stuff is saved for end notes, so those of us who like all that are happy too, but the general reading public can enjoy without all the nerdy interruptions. If you are doing your own research on Cook and the 18th century voyages of discovery, the endnotes and bibliography are priceless.)
The other reviews say so much about why this book is good, so I'll only add that I liked very much being filled in on the "Other side" of the equation. I'd gotten tired of reading James-Cook-Great-Hero biographies. This certainly shows true and deserving respect for Cook's achievements, but puts them in their full historical perspective and offers as much space to the 18th-century Pacific Islanders' voices and visions as is practicable, seeing as how the record on what they thought or believed is scanty.
I like that incidents that, until now, have always been seen solely from the European's perspective (like, "those Injuns kept stealing from us") were given new, fuller meaning (like, "those Newcomers keep taking our limited food resources and not offering us anything comparable in return so we'll even out the stakes").
This is a very new kind of biography, not just the he was born/lived/died type -- it really speaks about the world this one man lived, worked and died in. Socially, politically, personally, professionally -- all the bases are covered, but there is no one moment when you are bored.
I wish more books on the 18th century were written this well and were this enjoyable.
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by Nicholas Thomas
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