Blue Latitudes

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002, ISBN 0-312-42260-1, cover by Michael Brennan/Corbis).

Given my growing love of Patrick O'Brian's sea-faring tales and just about anything to do with the age of sail, I picked up this account of a modern re-tracing of the route of Captain Cook on his epic voyages.

I should have picked something else to read. At first amusing, ultimately tedious, the book is an endless account of how European society ruined various native groups and produced an endless supply of groups who complain about how great the past was, or spend one holiday to another planning on how to get drunker and drunker, etc.

There are a few bits here and there about James Cook. But, if you are interested in that subject, you would be better to seek out a more historical account than to read this muddy travelogue.