James Cook

James Cook's name runs through Australian history, and he is still argued over as a hero, a villain and everything in between. Peter FitzSimons asks who the man actually was: a boy raised on a Yorkshire farm who became the leading seaman, navigator and mapmaker of his age, charting around a third of the globe.

The book centres on the Endeavour voyage, the expedition on which Cook first reached the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. FitzSimons sets Cook beside Joseph Banks, a wealthy, famous botanist and socialite whose temperament and background could hardly have been more different. Their contrast runs through a journey that tested Cook's character and shaped how he is remembered.

Marking 240 years since Cook's death, the author looks at the whole man: his strengths and weaknesses, his passions and pursuits, and his failures as well as his successes.