This is a great book, if you can get throught the first chapter. I had to read this book over the summer for school and I thought it woul be a real boring experience, but it turned out, I really liked it. It is a story about Nathaniel Bowditch, he grows up during the Revolutionary War and loves to learn. He becomes an indentured slave because his father can not support him and his sibilings. This does not stop him. He becomes a ship captain and you go through most of his life hardships and all.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch was an excellent book. It was hard for me to put the book down. Nathaniel Bowditch-Nat-has life long dreams of going to Harvard. He is wonderful at math. The only problem with Nat's dream is his family is poor and the Revolutionary War is going on. His family has many seafaring men in it. Soon he sails and on his trip he learns many different languages, many errors in Moore's book of navigation, and discovers a new way for taking a lunar. This is a very good book!

This book was so well written! My boys ages 6 and 9 loved this book and so did their Dad. They read well past bedtime every night and talked about "Nat" during the day. When we finished the book my boys were interested in stars and navigation and had a keen interest in sailing ships. They even looked up Nathanial Bowditch on the interent and found the details fascinating. "Wow, it's a piece of living history," my 9 year old said of the story.

I read this book to my seven-year-old because I wanted him to gain some appreciation for engineering and history while enjoying a good adventure story. This book could not have been more disappointing, or irritating. In unimaginative, stilted prose that lacks appeal even for the very young, this book manages to vitiate everything about the Panama Canal tale that is worth telling. Astonishingly, the author says nothing about the malaria and yellow fever and accidents that took a devastating toll (5,600) on a 70,000 man workforce. Instead we are treated to the happy spectacle of workers cheering and clapping for Goethals. The story also stresses Goethals regret at never having had a chance to fight in battle. A great message for seven years olds! (It left me musing that if he had joined his men in the trenches he could have at least "died for his country, or commercial shipping").

Most unaccountably, the book has dialogue like this: "I know now what wives are for! They are to help husbands feel important" And if that wasn't good enough, the author sees fit to repeat it again toward the end. The Discovery Biography series makes a big fuss about its editor, Dr. Mary C Austin, touted as an "outstanding reading educational specialist". Unless she proposes to turn elementary school children into ultra-right wing dullards, I can only imagine that she never actually laid eyes on this text.

I certainly wish I hadn't.

For a really exciting read, try A World Explorer:Henry Morton Stanley, written back in 1965 by Charles Graves

This book is for teenagers, it is presented in a very younguish context with illustration and large print. Amazon should actually classified as a children, teenagers reading material. Actually teenagers do not read this type of books anymore, I used to read them in the 70's. Very dissapointing considering I am a serious reader looking for info on a more detailed and technical manner.