Book Corner: There’s a strong new batch of titles for the adventure-minded, though they will require considerably longer than the 2 minutes 3 seconds it takes to read a blog. Buy them for yourself, buy them for your fat brother-in-law, buy them for Christmas. Support the industry! And, remember, you saw ’em here first….maybe….possibly….:

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, by Caroline Alexander

”What caused the mutiny on the Bounty?” Alexander asks. ”The seductions of Tahiti, Bligh’s harsh tongue — perhaps. But more compellingly, a night of drinking and a proud man’s pride, a low moment on one gray dawn, a momentary and fatal slip in a gentleman’s code of discipline — and then the rush of consequences to be lived out for a lifetime.” This sounds almost like Conrad writing, and indeed it would have taken a Conrad to gives us a psychologically satisfactory Christian or Bligh. A sea mist hangs over this age-old tale. Alexander dispels it, to the reader’s fascination. But when all the facts are told and the fates of the cast are duly chronicled, the sea mist settles in again, as impenetrable and yet more interesting than it has ever been.” Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times

Evolution’s Captain: The Dark Fate of the Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around the World, by Peter Nichols

“Throughout this meaty book, Nichols, whose previous work includes A Voyage for Madmen, quotes extensively and judiciously from a solid range of sources, notably logbooks and the official narrative of the Adventure and Beagle, of which the third volume was Darwin’s Journal of Researches, later renamed The Voyage of the Beagle. He works hard at establishing the context in which events unfolded, and he has a finely tuned sense of history.” Sara Wheeler, The New York Times

Over The Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, By Laurence Bergreen

“Journalist Bergreen, who has penned biographies of James Agee, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin and Al Capone, superbly recreates Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan’s obsessive 16th-century quest, an ill-fated journey that altered Europe’s perception of the planet: “It was a dream as old as the imagination: a voyage to the ends of the earth…. Mariners feared they could literally sail over the edge of the world.”” Publishers Weekly

Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842, by Nathaniel Philbrick

“The harrowing survival tale that garnered Philbrick a National Book Award (In the Heart of the Sea, 2000) seems almost a tune-up for this saga of wind and wave. In revisiting the long-forgotten South Seas Exploring Expedition, the author has taken on perhaps the ultimate in fact-based sea stories…When the Ex. Ex., as it was known, left these shores, the author points out, “science” in America usually meant a hobby pursued by idle intelligentsia; after Wilkes’s squadron (three of sixoriginal ships) returned, and published studies began to pour forth, however, science became a real livelihood. But subsequent internecine squabbling and courts-martial quickly soured the public, relegating both Wilkes and a magnificent venture to oblivion. A rare blend of history, heroics, and gut-gripping emotion.” Kirkus Reviews

And, finally…….

Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World, by David Roberts

“A flabbergasting, if leisurely paced, story of survival in the Far North during the 18th century, shrouded by the enjoyable mystery of half-understood but decidedly atavistic circumstances. A voracious fan of adventure-travel literature, Roberts (Escape from Luciania, 2002, etc.) came across a fragmentary report of four Russian walrus-hunters who were shipwrecked on the Svarlbard Archipelago in the high Arctic—a collection of barren plateaus, made of basalt, glaciers, and bad weather, wild and elemental and described precisely here—and survived for six years, from 1743 until 1749, having carried ashore exactly one musket, a bag of flour, and a pouch of tobacco…Caveats aside, dogged research and hard travel to distant places make for a gem in the literature of survival under dire conditions.” Kirkus Reviews