Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz (2002, Abridged, Audio Cassette)

Blue Latitudes is a small gem of a book, which attempts to throw some light on a subject that has been widely covered already, but which nevertheless remains shrouded in a certain mystery: the life of Capt. James Cook, R.N. The work of a highly competent writer, it takes the reader on a voyage he or she could scarcely hope to make. I won’t spoil this very pleasant, often witty and wryly intelligent work for you by naming the places to which the author travelled on his quest for Cook, but it seems frankly incredible that he was able to cover quite this much ground. One assumes that, like Cook’s voyages, the book took shape over a number of years. <p> Apart from being a fine storyteller, Tony Horwitz brings a reasonably thorough understanding of things both British and Australian, which is a definite plus. This gives the book an added richness, both on the level of his attempted understanding of Cook himself, and with regard to the book’s humour, which is at times dazzling in its attempts to come to grips with modern Australasian lifestyles. Certainly, in his search for material, Horwitz was required to imbibe a startling quantity of spirituous liquors and other beverages during the course of the book, but the result is nevertheless a very clear-headed recounting of an often surprising, sometimes astonishing voyage. This is one of those cases in which one feels very much in the author’s debt, for having gone to quite this much trouble.