This book is an essential complement to earlier edited works by, and on, the Forsters, and a final note by this reviewer would call attention to the remarkable number of helpful endnotes, in some cases citing works published only in the last year.

Cook's Log

This fascinating and meticulously researched bookreminds us of the collaborative, multinational, and cross-cultural nature of maritime exploration and information gathering in the eighteenth-century Pacific Ocean. Remaining sensitive and attuned to the inherent imbalances of power in the process, Anne Mariss sheds new light on the local informants and ordinary sailors involved in Cook’s voyages of exploration. And by focusing on Johann Reinhold Forster, the book offers an engaging and refreshing addition to the Anglophone scholarship on the subject, emphasising the continental European roots of the enterprise. This book will make a significant contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the Forsters, the father-and-son scientific team that embarked on Cook’s second voyage, as well as European exploration in the Pacific more generally. The product of extensive research, Johann Reinhold Forster and the Making of Natural History on Cook’s Second Voyage will appeal to scholars and students with interests in maritime history, the history of exploration, the history of science and Pacific history.

John McAleer, University of Southampton