British Captain James Cook is one of the most notorious figures in Hawaiiʻs history, and probably best known for his death at Kealakekua Bay. But is he the villain local accounts make him out to be? Or do other cultures and communities hold a more favorable view of him?
Hampton Sides, author of The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, and Hawaii Radio Hour host Naka Nathaniel
discussed the renowned British naval captain and what historical accounts say about him.
HAMPTON SIDES is best-known for his gripping, deeply-researched non-fiction works that concern classic episodes from America’s past, stories often set in war, chronicling epic adventures of survival and exploration, or depicting first contact experiences between different worlds. He is the author of the bestselling histories Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound On His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, On Desperate Ground, and, most recently, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.
The New York Times named The Wide Wide Sea one of 2024’s Ten Best Books of the Year and Barack Obama featured it on his coveted Summer Reading List. Writing in The Observer, Stephen Fry called The Wide Wide Sea “extraordinarily compulsive and fascinating on every page.” The book has been optioned for the screen.
Hampton has been a contributor to Outside, National Geographic, Smithsonian, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many other publications.
A native of Memphis and a Yale graduate, Hampton is a board member of the Society of American Historians and the Author’s Guild, and he was a Miller Distinguished Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute. He has an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Colorado College.
The 2026 Live from the Atherton: Storytellersʻ Series was produced by Russell Subiono with audio production and post-production by Ananddev Banerjee. The broadcast of this event was produced by Russell Subiono.
