Eli Bendersky's website Full title: "Blue Latitudes: Boldly going where Captain Cook has gone before"
Before reading this book, I didn't know much about Captain Cook. All I knew is that he sailed to Polynesia, discovered New Zealand and was eaten by Aborigenes. The last part, as I now realize, was blatantly false, as Cook has actually been killed in Hawaii and not Australia, and it's still not clear whether he's been eaten - probably not. I think my misconception was based on an old Russian children song that had a line going something like "why did the Aborigenes eat Cook ?".
Tony Horwitz is a journalist with a big passion to travel over the world and a real knack for describing his travels in a lucid, highly-readable and very entertaining style. Armed by Cook's journals and several textbooks written on the subject, Horwitz tries to follow some of Cook's route in his 3 voyages to the Pacific. On his way, he tries to find out as much as possible about Cook, and about the places he visited, and in this way he explores the history and geography of New Zealand, the east coast of Australia, Tahiti, Tonga, Niue (did you know such place existed ? I didn't - check out this), Hawaii, Alaska and more places I don't recall now. Some parts of "Blue Latitudes" read like a good novel, some read like a comedy show, but all in all it manages to be both very entertaining and informative - just the kind of book I like !
This book is definitely highly recommended - it suffices to say that after reading it I immediately ordered another couple of books by the author.