Captain James Cook

Last updated Jun-30-05

By fat chance I found this book hiding in the library, the first American edition of Captain James Cook: a biography by Richard Hough [I no longer work for the public library]. This is the book that HST excerpted heavily in The Curse of Lono. Although it has two nice picture sections, it is both a curse and a delight that the book is so thorough (thorough to the point of making little sense). It is painfully detailed, and you would have to have a real interest in Captain Cook to get through all 400 pages (and I thought I was a patient reader!)

At least one reviewer was favourable:

This is a fine solid book, the fruit of immense reading, of very close personal research by the author and by his most distinguished predecessors, above all by the honoured but somewhat unwieldly Beaglehole. It is the kind of book that can be written only by a man wholly devoted to his subject and largely indifferent to the ordinary economics of writing: a respectable accomplishment." (Patrick O'Brian)

Indeed. :-) I found it a very pleasant and informative book to read. Unfortunately Richard Hough passed away in either 1999 or 2000, depending on the source.

Captain James Cook