The Wide Wide Sea

The Wide Wide Sea

Hampton Sides

Doubleday. 432 pp.

Insights gained from reading Side's masterfully written narrative of Captain James Cook's third scientific voyage:

1. It took place at around the same time (1776-79) as the American Revolution;

2. he died in Hawaii's Kealakekua Bay in 1779 in a skirmish with natives of that island;

3. one of the main goals of the voyage was to discover the so-called Northwest Passage from the Pacific side;

4. Cook himself entertained certain misgivings about his company's contacts with indigenous peoples.

Christendom

Christendom

Peter Heather

Knopf. 736 pp.

A little more difficult to plow through than similar histories written by, say, Diarmaid MacCulloch or Justo Gonzalez. Interesting to me was the emphasis Heather gives here to the interplay between church and state as the primary reason for Christianity's spread between the time of Constantine and the Fourth Lateran Council. And, sure, I get it. A lot of people probably did convert to the new faith in order to--as they say--"get along" and to "go along". That's an important point to make, which Heather does . . . repeatedly. Do I agree? Maybe. For the most part. And Heather doesn't entirely discount the idea that some may have converted for mostly spiritual reasons. 

So, all-in-all, I'd say this is fair treatment of the subject, even from someone who is a self-professed agnostic.