Captain Cook Rediscovered

Book excerpt: Captain Cook Rediscovered is the first modern study to frame Captain James Cook’s career from a North American vantage. Although Cook is inextricably linked to the South Pacific in the popular imagination, his crowning navigational and scientific achievements took place in the polar regions. Recognizing that Cook sailed more miles in the high latitudes of all of the world’s oceans than in the tropical zone, this book gives due attention to his voyages in seas and lands usually neglected. David L. Nicandri acknowledges the cartographic accomplishments of the Australasian first voyage but focuses on the second- and third-voyage discovery missions near the poles, where Cook pioneered the science of iceberg and icepack formation. This ground-breaking book overturns an area of study that has been typically dominated by the “palm-tree paradigm” – resulting in a truly modern appraisal of Cook for the climate change era.