James Cook was the last and greatest of the romantic navigators. In his relatively short and adventurous life (1728-79) he voyaged to the eastern and western seaboards of North America, the North and South Pacific and the Arctic and Antarctic bringing about a new comprehension of the world's geography and its peoples. He was the linking figure between the grey speculation of the early eighteenth century and the industrial age of the first half of the nineteenth century.
Richard Hough has written an exciting and marvellously readable biography, full of new insights and interpretations of one of the world's greatest mariners.
