non-fiction
JAMES COOK: THE VOYAGES
by William Frame and Laura Walker (Bateman, $50) It’s the illustrations that make this book stand out from the others rolling down the assembly line for the 250th anniversary of the start of Captain James Cook’s three world-shaping voyages. The authors are archivists at the British Museum, which is staging a major exhibition of its Cook-related treasures, and their book draws on that fabulous trove. The text is well worth reading. But it is the pictures by artists employed on the voyages, paintings by Tahitian high priest Tupaia, photos of specimens gathered, Cook’s charts and samples of his log entries, plus other works of art, that are the real source of wonder. (JE)
REPORTER: A MEMOIR
by Seymour M. Hersh (Allen Lane, $55)
Seymour Hersh made his name reporting on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and doesn’t appear to have paused for breath since. This is a chronicle of big stories — Watergate, secret CIA projects, war in Iraq — and heavyweight publications such as the New York Times and
New Yorker. It’s also something of an investigative reporter’s how-to guide: cultivate sources, keep digging, check your facts — and have no faith in the official version. And, inevitably, it’s a reflection on the days when more news outlets had the time and resources to deliver the scoops that are Hersh’s specialty. (MF)
THE IMMEASURABLE WORLD: JOURNEYS IN DESERT PLACES
by William Atkins (Faber, $37)
By definition, deserts are dry, but they’re not lifeless — or lacking in variety. Atkins finds life wherever he goes, from Egypt’s Eastern Desert, to South Australia’s Maralinga nuclear-test area, the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, or the wasteland that was once the Aral Sea. Not just animal and plant life: this is as much about the people who live in arid places. Atkins is no explorer — it’s too late for that — and this isn’t your intrepid managainst-nature narrative. It is, however, the best sort of travel writing, sharply observed and vividly written. (MF)
THE RE-ORIGIN OF SPECIES
by Torill Kornfeldt (Scribe, $40)
Imagine if you could re-animate one of the woolly mammoths that regularly emerge, perfectly frozen, from the Siberian permafrost. Or maybe coax a chicken embryo to turn into a baby dinosaur. Kornfeldt meets some of the scientists trying to make such feats reality, bringing long-extinct species back from the dead. And she poses some big questions. How feasible are such efforts? (Answer: much harder than it looked in Jurassic Park). What could be the unintended consequences? And what’s the point, given that we have plenty of notquite-extinct-yet species to worry about? (MF)
THE HUNTERS: THE PRECARIOUS LIVES OF NEW ZEALAND’S BIRDS OF PREY
by Debbie Stewart (Random House, $50) Debbie Stewart, founder of the Wingspan National Birds of Prey Centre, has written a marvellous tribute to the sleek, charismatic hunters of our skies that have fascinated her since childhood. These range from the terrifying, extinct poua¯ kai or New Zealand eagle, the largest raptor that ever lived; the ka¯ hu or swamp harrier and the much rarer endemic falcon or ka¯ rearea; to the self-introduced barn owls of the Far North. It’s filled with intriguing tales — such as the uplifting story of the groundbreaking project to re-introduce falcons to Rotorua. (JE)