Rod Scher has done it again, this time with his brilliant annotation of Richard Henry Dana's classic, Two Years Before the Mast. Scher earlier had annotated another classic, Captain Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World. Besides helping the reader make sense of many nautical terms - - some peculiar to the day and quite unknown even to today's sailor, both annotations include frequent "In the News" sidebars linking the story with news events of the day.
Reading TYBM reopened young Dana'a travel narrative for me and Scher follows his tale with critiques, compliments, tie-ins with today, and little known facts (at least to me) about the book and the milieu of Dana's time.
With the annotated version of Two Years Beafore the Mast, as well as the earlier Sailing Alone Around the World, Scher has done a remarkable job, making both stories come alive once again. As author Patricia Wood reviewed, these both are tales of "true adventure, humor and pathos that (have) given life once more by Scher's deft handling of the material."
So, get a your copy of TYBM from Amazon.com by simply clicking on the ad to the left of this posting, just above "My Blog Lists", or truck down to your closest Barnes and Noble. And why not get both classics while you're at it? There's a Slocum ad to the left, as well. Good reads as you ply the Salish Sea, or wish that you were.
In the interests of full disclosure, you'll find me listed in the acknowledgements as well as on the back cover reviews of both books, for which I don't get a single penny except for the author's undying gratitude and promises of a somewhat better life, at least I think that's what he said; cell connections from Lincoln NE being fuzzy at times.
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