This extraordinary book skillfully blends diverse historical evidence to tell the harrowing story of Caroline Kearney and her struggles against the paternalistic inheritance laws of the nineteenth century colonial world.

This first modern study to focus on James Cook’s polar adventures, Captain Cook Rediscovered introduces an entirely new explorer who is more at home along the edge of the polar ice packs than the Pacific’s sandy beaches.

Quests to discover a navigable or usable Northwest Passage ended in failure, but as Discovering Nothing shows, the many attempts to find what nature did not provide led to the construction of its transcontinental equivalent, changing the landscape of North America forever.