Overview

Two Years Before the Mast is a classic travel narrative which inspired canonical works like Moby Dick and Sailing Alone Around the World. As he follows Richard Henry Dana (a Harvard dropout-turned-sailor) on his voyages around North America (encountering racial injustices and struggling through the battered life of a foremast crewman), Rod Scher annotates his tale with critiques, compliments, tie-ins to today, and little-known facts about both the book and the milieu of Dana's time.

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9781574093100

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Reviews

Rod Scher is an ideally informative and amiable companion as he follows Dana on his exciting and exhausting voyage-he places Dana fully in his time and place, offering historical and cultural contexts for the writer's experiences, observations, and expressions. Scher knows how to inspire a sense of historical imagination in his readers, without forgetting who we are now. Scher can be proud of his own achievement in bringing such factual detail and humane judgment to this edition. -- Stephen M. Buhler, Aaron Douglas Professor of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln An enjoyable and fascinating look at a [classic]. The modern reader navigating Dana's story is given a global view in retrospect, which adds much to Dana's narrative and offers a glimpse of the views and opinions of that time and place. Scher's The Annotated Two Years Before the Mast takes a classic tome and repackages it with seafaring terms defined and historical references in place, thereby transforming it into a gripping tale for any avid sailor, history buff, or literary aficionado to enjoy. -- Patricia Wood, author of Lottery Rod Scher has done it again, this time with his brilliant annotation ... Scher's annotation reopened this classic for me. This is a careful and thoughtful work, never dry and often with a subtle twist of humor, yet always sensitive to Dana's themes. Reading this annotation brings young Dana's chronicle into sharp, poignant relief in an almost new and very exciting way. -- E. Michael Jackson, USCG Master Mariner and boating instructor

Rod Scher has done it again, this time with his brilliant annotation . . . . Scher s annotation reopened this classic for me. This is a careful and thoughtful work, never dry and often with a subtle twist of humor, yet always sensitive to Dana s themes. Reading this annotation brings young Dana s chronicle into sharp, poignant relief in an almost new and very exciting way.--E. Michael Jackson, USCG Master Mariner and boating instructor

Author Information

Rod Scher received his M.Ed from the University of Oregon. A longtime boating enthusiast, writer, and former English teacher, he is an editor for Smart Computing Magazine. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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