About The Book
On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach in Hawaii, Cook was killed – beaten and stabbed in a conflict with the indigenous population.
What brought Cook to these final moments, so at odds with his reputation? Renowned for his humane leadership, dedication to science and the curiosity and respect, not judgement, with which he greeted societies that were new to him, Cook had already mapped huge swathes of the Pacific and initiated first European contact with numerous native peoples.
The stated mission for his third voyage was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London high society, to his home islands. But Cook carried secret orders to venture north, to discover the fabled Northwest Passage and chart and claim lands before Britain’s imperial rivals. And Cook himself was different on his final, fatal voyage.
Deeply researched and vividly told, The Wide Wide Sea is at once a ferociously-paced, epic adventure and a searching examination of the consequences of the Age of Exploration from a master storyteller.
About the Author
HAMPTON SIDES is the author of In the Kingdom of Ice, Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound On His Trail, and other bestselling works of narrative history and literary non-fiction. His newest work, On Desperate Ground, will be published by Doubleday this October. Hampton is an editor-at-large for Outside magazine. His magazine work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice named a Finalist for the National Magazine Awards in feature writing. A recent fellow of the Santa Fe Institute, he teaches literary journalism and narrative history at Colorado College. A native of Memphis with a BA in history from Yale, he lives in Santa Fe with his wife Anne.
