Poignant, probing, antic, and exhilarating, this book brings to life a man who helped create the global village we inhabit today. The author takes readers on a wild ride across hemispheres and centuries to recapture Captain Cook’s adventures. Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, works as a sailor aboard a replica of Cook’s ship, meets island kings and beauty queens, and carouses the South Seas.

“In other words, Cook and his men were to voyage to the edge of the known world, then leap off it and sail into the blue.”

Photos by Anna Iltnere / Sea Library