For the new year’s first post, I’d like to review and recommend two stimulating recent publications:
• Hampton Sides, THE WIDE, WIDE SEA: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook;
• Michael Taylor, IMPOSSIBLE MONSTERS: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the Battle between Science and Religion.

Both works closely re-examine crucial milestones in British imperial history: Captain Cook’s strategic mission to locate the elusive Northwest Passage; and the intensifying culture war triggered by an explosion of fossil discoveries. These developments occurred only a generation apart. Cook’s voyage concluded in 1779. The transformative fossils began emerging in 1811.

Both studies report on scientific breakthroughs and their practical applications: navigation, cartography and first-contact anthropology in Sides’s case; geology, paleontology, botany and zoology in Taylor’s.

Both are articulate, accessible, educational and entertaining. They garnered “Best of 2024” kudos from The Economist and The New York Times.

Have a look. I think you may enjoy them.