Pirate Of Exquisite Mind

As a youth, William Dampier spent several years swashbuckling among bloodthirsty buccaneers before sailing around the world three times-in an age when crossing the Pacific was a major feat. He reached Australia eighty years before Captain Cook and was the first explorer to visit five continents. The first true travel writer and naturalist, his accounts of his exotic experiences caused a sensation in Europe. Coleridge called Dampier "a man of exquisite mind." Swift and Defoe used his experiences in writing Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe. Darwin called his books "a mine of information" and incorporated his concept of "sub-species" into the theory of evolution. Dampier's description of breadfruit was the impetus for Captain Bligh's voyage on the Bounty. He was so influential that today he has more than one thousand entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, including such words as chopsticks, barbecue, and kumquat. Anthropologists still use his work. And yet, this Englishman's extraordinay exploits are virtually forgotten. Illustrated with maps and drawings, this book retraces his footsteps around the world, vividly recreates his astonishing life and times-and restores him to his rightful place in history.Preston, Diana is the author of 'Pirate Of Exquisite Mind', published 2005 under ISBN 9780425200377 and ISBN 042520037X.