Many, many thanks to Steve Wick for foisting this book on me. I read Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic and enjoyed it, but I don't know if I would have gotten around to this one. I'm glad I did.

It's part history of Captain James Cook's three voyages of discovery in the Pacific Ocean during the late 1700s and part and account of Horwitz's own travels to the places Cook visited. I've read a couple books on Cook and enjoyed them all, particularly Lynne Withey's Voyages of Discovery. This book was a good refresher course.

The charm was Horwitz's observations, sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking, always amazingly insightful. He is a master of details and manages, somehow, to be part of the story without intruding. He visits Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Niue and Tonga, Northern England, Alaska, Hawaii …

Here's a sample of his writing, an interview with the pilot of an Alaskan boat and his wife:

Melia joined us on the back deck. I asked her how she'd ended up with this lunatic for a husband. Melia laughed. Men outnumbered women in Unalaska by three to one, so finding a date wasn't a problem. "The odds are good," she said, "but the goods are odd."

So was her wedding to Rick. They'd married atop the wheelhouse of a fishing boat in a remote island cove. A geologist friend officiated (in Alaska, anyone can legally preside over a wedding), the skipper served as best man, and a male deckhand acted as maid of honor.

"Sounds romantic," I said.

"It was, in a way,"Rick said, "except that we had to spend our wedding night in the cabin of this tiny boat with three other guys listening in."

Melia shrugged. "That wasn't the worst part," she said. "The boat ride to get there was really rough. We projectile-vomited the whole way."