Sailing aficionado Barrie focuses on the instantly recognizable but largely inscrutable navigational gadget and its role in globe-altering sea voyages over the past three centuries.
The Oxford-educated author interweaves his own ripping account of an Atlantic crossing when he was 19 with historical stories of seamen such as James Cook and Beagle captain Robert FitzRoy with his polite prose favoring the mariners' acumen over their hot-tempered reputations.
(The Bounty’s oft-bad-mouthed Captain Bligh gets his propers for surviving 4,000 miles of open ocean without charts.)
But beneath the book’s calm surface churns a melancholic message about how the comfort of technology symbolized by the sextant’s almighty antagonist, GPS has turned our gaze away from the stars.A-
