Captain Cook Rediscovered is the first modern study to frame Captain James Cook’s career from a North American vantage. Although Cook is inextricably linked to the South Pacific in the popular imagination, his crowning navigational and scientific achievements took place in the polar regions. David L. Nicandri acknowledges the cartographic accomplishments of the Australasian first voyage but focuses on the second- and third-voyage discovery missions in the extreme latitudes, where Cook pioneered the science of iceberg and icepack formation. A truly modern appraisal of early polar science, Captain Cook Rediscovered resonates in the climate change era.

David L. Nicandri's profile page

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

David Nicandri has ransacked the archives and libraries in order to demonstrate, which he fully does, his view that, although many have seen Cook as an explorer of the tropics, it is in icy wastes and choked channels that Cook was at his best as a careful navigator and observer.

BC Studies, Issue 209

David Nicandri's Introduction to this elegant volume summarises the arguments that he develops at length...few will change their minds entirely on reading Nicandri's arguments, but for many (including this reviewer) the book will make them look afresh at the well-worn accounts of Cook's three voyages.

Cook's Log, Vol. 44