Great commentary, I’m just a truck driver but this is my favorite book so much history. As I drive along and can envision what he saw. Just a wonderful story of this man. I found the epilogue interesting when he went back 24 years later and all he saw was gone. Great read and audio listen. Sorry if not grammatically correct I’m just trying to communicate to you that I enjoyed you’re video and my fondness of the subject
I inherited my grandfather’s Harvard Classic collection several years ago but I have yet to read any of the books. The type is small and some of them are not in modern English so a bit difficult to read. I need to get on it!
Hi, I'm a historian who discovered your site after thinking hard about why "Two Years Before the Mast" became part of "Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books". Dr. Eliot states, "My aim was not to select the best 50, or best 100 books in the world, but to give, in 23 thousand pages or thereabouts, a picture of the progress of the human race within historical times, so far as that progress can be depicted in books." Pretty unique. So what does "Two Years Before the Mast" show? I see the drama in Dr. Eliot - the President of Harvard - setting the memoir of one of his students between Homer's Odyssey and Burke's French Revolution. It challenged the intellectually elite to get their hands dirty before they put on their preachers' collars. Read to the end, and in the Concluding Chapter, we learn why the Captains of Industry found this book so influential. If it is necessary for the captain to have complete authority and control of the ship, what rights do the seamen have? And is there a better way than flogging your workers?
A true California classic.
Thanks Sam!
Thanks for sharing!
Great commentary, I’m just a truck driver but this is my favorite book so much history. As I drive along and can envision what he saw. Just a wonderful story of this man. I found the epilogue interesting when he went back 24 years later and all he saw was gone. Great read and audio listen. Sorry if not grammatically correct I’m just trying to communicate to you that I enjoyed you’re video and my fondness of the subject
I inherited my grandfather’s Harvard Classic collection several years ago but I have yet to read any of the books. The type is small and some of them are not in modern English so a bit difficult to read. I need to get on it!
Good luck reading all the Harvard classics! Sounds like a challenging goal.
Thanks! It's thousands of pages, but it's from some of the greatest books ever written! So I think it will be worth it.
Stick with this book until the end especially if it has the added final chapters . it is incredible and TRUE
Hi, I'm a historian who discovered your site after thinking hard about why "Two Years Before the Mast" became part of "Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books". Dr. Eliot states, "My aim was not to select the best 50, or best 100 books in the world, but to give, in 23 thousand pages or thereabouts, a picture of the progress of the human race within historical times, so far as that progress can be depicted in books." Pretty unique.
So what does "Two Years Before the Mast" show? I see the drama in Dr. Eliot - the President of Harvard - setting the memoir of one of his students between Homer's Odyssey and Burke's French Revolution. It challenged the intellectually elite to get their hands dirty before they put on their preachers' collars.
Read to the end, and in the Concluding Chapter, we learn why the Captains of Industry found this book so influential. If it is necessary for the captain to have complete authority and control of the ship, what rights do the seamen have? And is there a better way than flogging your workers?