Into the Blue - Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before (Paperback, New edition)

Captain James Cook's three epic journeys between 1768 and 1779 and sailing some 170,000 miles were the last great voyages of discovery. Before Cook set off, one third of the world's map remained, simply, blank.  By the time he was done, there was little left to discover. Cook and his men were also among the first Europeans to encounter Pacific natives: Tahitian dancers, New Zealand cannibals, Hawaiian surfers, Australian Aborigines sealed off from the rest of the world for thousands of years.

Tony Horwitz vividly recounts these adventures, and revisits the lands and peoples Cook discovered to explore the captain’s legacy in today's Pacific. Horwitz also has exotic and often comic adventures of his own, on land and at sea, including a stint as a working sailor aboard a replica of Cook's tall ship, the Endeavour.

Click here to read an extract.

‘Playful but never flippant, meticulously researched and occasionally moving, this is an unusual take on the legacy of an enigmatic captain … it remains a fresh and likeable attempt to boldly go where few biographers have gone before’ — Daily Telegraph

‘A fine piece of reporting … he vividly describes the horrors of climbing the masts to furl the sails, sleeping in a hammock, hauling on the anchor while the ship tosses and surges’ —Anthony Samson, Guardian

'A well-written travel book which weds levity of tone with gravity of purpose ... inquisitive and generous ... Horwitz is likeable: honest, hard-working at textual research, vivid, not facetious. He is reminiscent of Bill Bryson, revelling in farce, thriving on ironic contrast. And he does the leg-work' — TLS

‘Part travelogue, part biography, Into the Blue is an exhilarating journey in Cook’s wake … Horwitz, winner of America’s 1995 Pulitzer Prize for reporting, is an amiable but razor-eyed journalist whose research, excursions and insights bring to life the man who out-discovered Columbus’ — Financial Times

‘Tony Horwitz is doubtless an adventurer in life as well as landscapes. A seasoned American travel-writer and foreign correspondent, he describes his voyages in the wake of Captain Cook with worldliness and humour, so that this welcome and highly readable addition to the Cook bibliography can also be taken on its own terms as a travelogue … This is a fascinating read for all would-be adventurers. It’s well researched and serious but also hugely entertaining’ — Literary Review

'Thoroughly enjoyable. No writer has better captured the heroic enigma that was Captain James Cook than Tony Horwitz in this amiable and enthralling excursion around the Pacific' —Bill Bryson

'Horwitz's adventures pay illuminating tribute to the great navigator #151; to Captain Cook himself and to his intrepid eighteenth-century colleagues, including the improbably attractive Sir Joseph Banks. But most of all Into the Blue offers clear-eyed, vivid, and highly entertaining reassurance that there are still outlandish worlds to be discovered' —Caroline Alexander, author of The Endurance: Shackleton’s Lengendary Antarctic Expedition