Hampton Sides

A Lonely Grave in a Far Land

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides

April 7, 2025 by Pooja Leave a Comment

Captain James Cook was already a world-renowned explorer when he set out on his third great voyage around the world. Over the course of three years, he’d touch down on the shores of Tasmania, be the first European to come in contact with the people of the Hawaiian islands, and nearly destroy his ships and sailors in the search for the fabled Northwest Passage – and meet a grisly end in a strange murder that is still being debated to this very day. I read […]

Blood and Thunder

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

January 21, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This book takes place circa 1845 during the Polk presidency, who is oddly obscured in history because of his status as president prior to the US Civil War, but this relative obscurity belies just how instrumental he was to the westward expansion of the US and to a kind of preparatory set of exercises for the Civil War. If you were to view the US-Mexico War merely as the crucible through which most of the primary figures of the US Civil War were forged and […]

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