cover image CAPTAIN COOK: A Legacy Under Fire

CAPTAIN COOK: A Legacy Under Fire

Vanessa Collingridge, . . Lyons, $27 (384pp) ISBN 978-1-58574-725-2

Already published and praised in England, this first book by British columnist and news anchor Collingridge presents a new take on the life of Captain James Cook, the British explorer and navigator whose journeys led to the "discovery" of Australia and the Hawaiian islands. After becoming fascinated at an early age with Cook's 18th-century exploits, Collingridge discovered during college at Oxford that a distant cousin, George Collingridge, more than 100 years after Cook's death, had risked his reputation with a convincing claim that Cook had not been the first to reach Australia. After spending "months trawling through map-room and libraries, retracing their footsteps," the author was able to produce this engaging account that links three decades—"a dance of a tango of three." Collingridge intercuts finely detailed chapters on Cook's exciting major explorations with her ancestor's more bookish investigation of newly discovered maps indicating that "the Dutch had certainly reached Australian shores at the start of the 17th century," which led to their mapping of western Australia, and that the Dutch documents were actually based on earlier maps made by the Portuguese. The author aptly achieves her stated goals of investigating Cook's real story, expanding the British version of Cook that is based on the way countries "manipulate history," and introducing a modern audience to the ongoing controversy over the Dutch-Portuguese maps. (Sept.)

Forecast:Although it was praised in England, this excellent book's careful and deliberate account of exciting historical and psychological events may find itself competing with another Cook title, Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz.