John Robson: Captain Cook's world: Maps of the life and voyages of James Cook R.N.

Random House $59.95

Review: Hugh Laracy*

James Cook was the greatest historically verifiable navigator of the Pacific.

The extent of his journeying, the quantity and accuracy of his charting and the accessibility he thereby conferred on the region - and especially on New Zealand - attest to his achievement.

Admittedly, the aftermath of his voyaging in Oceania has not been unequivocally benign, as commentators readily acknowledge, and as he himself observed.

Still, Cook the mariner remains unchallenged.

Fittingly, his journals and all the charts and art work produced by him and his acolytes (who included William Bligh) have been reproduced in large, lavish and expensive volumes.

Ironically, however, he barely rates a mention in the New Zealand Historical Atlas of 1997. It does not indicate where he had contacts with Maori people, of whom he left extensive descriptions, or even a copy of his remarkably accurate coastal outline.

Now, with Captain Cook's World, redress has been made, and munificently so.

John Robson, formerly a geologist, is now a librarian at Waikato University. He has produced a comprehensive collection of clear and precise maps that illustrate not only every section of Cook's three expeditions, but also record every place with which he was ever associated, together with many of those where he is commemorated.

Complementing the uncluttered and aesthetically pleasing maps is a detailed, factual, narrative commentary. Thus, the where? when? and what happened? of virtually every moment of Cook's career may be easily and accurately established.

Yet this is not a work of hagiography. Nor is it a derivative reworking of the established core of authoritive works - as is so much of the writing on Cook.

Rather, it is an original contribution to the permanent corpus of Cook historiography. It does not trespass into that speculative arena where the meanings of Cook's endeavours are being subjected to earnest but evanescent - often ideologically driven - debate, but will endure as a valuable reference work.

On my shelves Robson's opus will sit companionably with those of Beaglehole, Smith and Joppien and Andrew David.

* Hugh Laracy is an associate professor of Pacific history at the University of Auckland.