A vivid and well-documented account of the life and voyages of the famous 18th-century English navigator. James Cook discovered and charted coastlines from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from the east of Australia to Alaska, and hundreds of islands in between. Here Hough (Edward and Alexandra, 1993, etc.) tells the story of this remarkable man, the son of a land laborer, who managed to rise through the ranks of the Royal Navy to become a member of the Royal Society (the oldest scientific society in Great Britain) and one of the most celebrated men of his time. Hough concentrates on the three lengthy Pacific voyages that occupied the last 11 years of Cook's life before his death at the hands of Hawaiian cannibals in 1779 at the age of 51. His first great voyage involved an expedition to Tahiti in order to measure planetary distances by parallax observations of the passage of Venus across the sun that took place in 1769. He was then commissioned to claim for Britain the Great Southern Continent (which he proved did not exist) and West Holland (Australia), and charged with opening the much-sought-after Northwest Passage. Hough's narrative is based on his extensive reading of the copious logs and scientific records made by Cook himself and the astronomers and botanists who sailed with him. We learn of Cook's sure instinct for governing his men, how he imposed a vitamin C regimen, which virtually eliminated scurvy, and of his unusual gentleness and understanding in his dealings with Polynesian and Maori natives who had never before seen a European. Hough has a keen eye for the pathos and absurdity of human nature, which enhances descriptions both of the high and mighty with whom Cook had to contend in England and of the natives whom he encountered in his amazing journeys. A rich taste of 18th-century life and its spirit of scientific and human daring.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03680-4
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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