Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
By Tony Horwitz

There's a good reason why the subtitle has a familiar ring. As Horwitz explains in this entertaining and thoughtful travelogue-cum-history, 18th-century explorer James Cook and Star Trek's Capt. James T. Kirk have a lot in common. Both set out "to discover and describe new lands, rather than to conquer or convert." Kirk was arguably more successful, having survived more than 30 years in TV and movies, whereas after just a decade Cook was killed and roasted by irate Hawaiian natives.

Cook, who mapped much of the east coast of Australia, was the first known European to land in Hawaii and New Zealand—the 18th-century equivalent of outer space. Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Confederates in the Attic, follows Cook's trail around the globe with a wildly eclectic set of companions. Old pal Roger, a mordantly funny drunk born in Cook's bleak corner of North Yorkshire, steals every scene he's in, especially the one in which the pair dress as 18th-century English sailors to "claim" a topless beach in Tahiti for the Crown. (Holt, $26)

BOTTOM LINE: Great voyage