Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose

Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O'Brien

A rather amazing account of Rose's career as a baseball player and as a gambling addict. He really was one of the greatest ball players of all time, but what is astounding is the way he was able to pull off the gambling he did for so many years. This is really interesting in light of the recent incidents with Shohei Ohtani. Rose gambled on horse racing, Jai Lai, dog racing, football, basketball really almost anything someone would take a bet on. Ultimately his downfall was betting on pro-baseball and on his own team. The manic energy that it took to live like he did for so many years is extraordinary.

Another interesting aspect of this is that when Rose finally caught and was banned from baseball, was right at the time of the rise of steroids in pro-baseball, which became a much bigger scandal but somehow with less consequences for the people involved.

The Wide Wide Sea

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

The last of Cook's three Pacific voyages proved to be fatal, and he would never return to England. As a navigator and map maker he was very much ahead of his time. It is amazing what he was able to accomplish with the crude instruments that he had available to him. The author points out that Cook had an 'anthropological' view of the new civilizations that he would find, long before the discipline of anthropology was founded, and against the trends of the time when most people viewed people as primitive and backward.

There is much that cannot be known about Cook on this last voyage, but evidence points to the fact that he acted uncharacteric on this voyage, which ultimately got him killed. By the time of his third voyage he was beyond the age that many captains would be when trying this kind of voyage. This is a great story of a great explorer. Among his crew on this last voyage were the young William Bligh and George Vancouver, so Cook did lay the groundwork for the future of British expansion into an Empire.

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins

In many ways this reads more as a textbook that a casual read. The author is very thorough in his descriptions. It is interesting that this is also the history of under water archaeology, that did not really begin until the late 1940s after Jacque Cousteau had created the modern scuba diving system. The shipwrecks are described starting with the oldest that have been salvaged and goes up to a shipwreck from WW2. His descriptions are good and intriguing, and do make we want to visit some of these wrecks that have been salvaged, like the English ship the Mary Rose.