The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Or Why Did Captain Cook Die: Captain Cook in the South Seas (Allen Lane History S.) - Softcover

Anne Salmond has devoted a lifetime to the study of the relations between Europeans and Polynesians. This startling, rich, stylish book is the result.

In Salmond's account Cook's voyages - themselves perhaps the most gripping, brilliant pieces ofnavigation ever attempted, plunging south to discover Antarctica and veering north to discover Hawaii - regain their peculiar, dreamlike quality. Cook's ships, far from remaining little wooden islands of Englishness in a Polynesian sea, become evermore tangled in the worlds they encounter, leaving Cook's tattoed, dazzled sailors just as altered as the Polynesians themselves.