The writings of a first-rate scientist and daring adventurer, and a major inspiration for Elizabeth Gilbert s bestselling novel The Signature of All Things
John Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals were published...

The narratives of the voyages of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean era have delighted readers over the centuries as stirring accounts of the daring of empire-builders. In the belief that in our post-imperial era these writings can be seen as a powerful and special kind of literature, having kinship with the great fictional tragedies of the period, Philip Edwards here collects the contemporary accounts of three famous "last voyages." Written by the participants themselves--leaders, mutineers, young gentlemen, and a poet and mathematician--the narratives recount moving stories of endeavor and...

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