UBC Press Captain Cook Rediscovered book Hardcover 400 pages

Captain James Cook is inextricably linked to the South Pacific in the popular imagination, his voyages satisfying our fascination with so-called Polynesian exoticism. But his crowning navigational and scientific achievements took place in the polar regions.Captain Cook Rediscovered is the first modern study to orient Captain James Cook’s career from a North American vantage. Recognizing that Cook sailed more miles in the high latitudes of all of the world’s oceans than in the tropical zone, this book gives due attention to his voyages in seas and lands usually neglected, such as South Georgia in the far southern Atlantic and the Alaskan sub-continent, whose dimensions Cook first delineated. David L. Nicandri acknowledges the cartographic accomplishments of the first voyage but focuses on the second- and third-voyage discovery missions in the icy latitudes near the poles, where Cook pioneered the science of iceberg and icepack formation.This groundbreaking book upturns an area of study that has been typically dominated by the “palm-tree paradigm.” Nicandri replaces that stereotype with a balanced account of Cook’s travels – resulting in a truly modern appraisal of Cook for the climate change era.

David L. Nicandri is the former executive director of the Washington State Historical Society, where he served from 1987 until his retirement in 2011.