October 2007 ENDEAVOUR. The Story of Captain Cook's First Great Epic Voyage. by Peter Aughton. This book was recommmended to us by John Moore who leads another history book club in Massachusetts. I did not know much about Captain Cook's voyages until reading this book, but now I want to read more. In fact, there's a very good article in the September 1971 issue of National Geographic which gives maps and details of Cook's three voyages. He was killed on the third voyage in the Hawaian Islands on February 14, 1779. I scanned the fold-out cross section of the Endeavour found in this article (see it at this LINK) A paragraph on page 208 of the book summed up just how interesting a story this was Had there ever been a voyage of discovery, before or after the Endeavour, which brought together so many aspects of the sciences and the arts? It is difficult to find any subject that thr voyage did not touch upon. There were mathematics and astronomy, navigation, anthropology, botany, natural history, geography, geology, draughtmanship, art, cartography, medical science, military science, nutrition, linguistics, psychology and many others- not to mention the management and organizational skills required to provision a ship and keep the crew in good health ans spirits for three years on the far side of the globe. The primary sientific motivation for the voyage was to view the transit of Venus across the sun on June 3, 1769 (which they did from Tahiti) to get data to establish the distance from the sun to the earth, and thus get a reference point to calculate the distances to the stars. The author dis a good job in setting Cook's voyage into the perspective on late 18th Century scientific and social thought. I highly recommend this book to other history enthusiasts. This can be read in short amount of time (210 pages) but it contains a lot of intersting information, and a darn good story complete with suspense and danger.