Books in Brief: Captain James Cook

Captain James Cook, by Alan Villiers (Scribner’s, $7.50). Travelers across the broad reaches of today’s Pacific often note a striking number of place-names containing the word “Cook”: Mt. Cook and Cook Strait, New Zealand; Cook’s Bay at Moorea in the Society Islands; and Cook Inlet at Anchorage, Alaska—to name only four. All, of course, memorialize the dour eighteenth-century captain and explorer who discovered the Hawaiian Islands and mapped the Pacific for England. Sir Alan Villiers, himself a lifelong sailing buff who in 1935 became very likely the last man ever to sail a full-rigged ship around Cape Horn, idolizes his subject and turns Cook’s three great voyages into the gripping tale they deserve to be. Even the most confirmed landlubber will succumb to Villiers’ exuberant enthusiasm at Cook’s awesome skill, whether in dodging Antarctic icefloes, negotiating with Polynesian cannibals, or sailing his small ship down the throat of a howling gale. So pull up your easy chair in the great cabin of the good ship Endeavour, and under Captain Cook’s

assured command round the Horn with stuns’ls set and fling yourself onto the vast mystery of “the “Pacifick.” w. a. rusher

WA

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William A. Rusher

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Captain James Cook, by Alan Villiers (Scribner’s, $7.50). Travelers across the broad reaches of today’s Pacific often note a striking number of place-names containing the word “Cook”: Mt. Cook and Cook Strait, New Zealand; Cook’s Bay at Moorea in the Society Islands; and Cook Inlet at Anchorage, Alaska—to name only four. All, of course, memorialize the dour eighteenth-century captain and explorer who discovered the Hawaiian Islands and mapped the Pacific for England. Sir Alan Villiers, himself a lifelong sailing buff who in 1935 became very likely the last man ever to sail a full-rigged ship around Cape Horn, idolizes his subject and turns Cook’s three great voyages into the gripping tale they deserve to be. Even the most confirmed landlubber will succumb to Villiers’ exuberant enthusiasm at Cook’s awesome skill, whether in dodging Antarctic icefloes, negotiating with Polynesian cannibals, or sailing his small ship down the throat of a howling gale. So pull up your easy chair in the great cabin of the good ship Endeavour, and under Captain Cook’s

assured command round the Horn with stuns’ls set and fling yourself onto the vast mystery of “the “Pacifick.” w. a. rusher