Customer Reviews

Blue of Capricorn

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This book has many factual chapters about the Pacific Region, and five tales that are representative of some elements of the area. The Black and the White is arguably one of the most important fictional stories of the Pacific: A French man who escaped the wretchedness of his nation to discover that his adopted culture was heartbreakingly shallow. It is one of those few stories that will leave you thinking, and you may very well read again and again. It was a great loss when Burdick died at a relatively young age.

A great example of a excellent book that could become a classic without being confused with world literature. A strait forward discription of the South Seas and their peoples and geography(how coral attols and volcanic islands are formed) without being dry, but rather using it to help the reader better understand the stories he has to tell. Anyone who loves the South Seas and the stories of Jack London and Somerset Maugham will love this book. It is the #1 book I have everyone read that comes to visit me. I always receive five thumbs up.

I read this book first in 1966. Today I'm buying a new copy. It's a collection of unusual short stories about the South Pacific. Most, if not all, are true and will capture your heart and make you yearn to go there.

This book blew me away, it is simply fantastic. It is sad that Eugene Burdick died at age 46. If you want to be enchanted, mesmerized, read this book, it is simply magnificent. I shall treasure it in my own library because it is the kind of book you may read over and over again. If you have not read it, you are in for a treat.

"Jack Nash" is one of the best short stories I've read in a long, long time.

Used book was in good condition. Received book in a timely manner from shipper.

I read this book over 40 years ago, and it's still wonderful to think about the moods and events in the stories. The floral arranger who could only make one creation, the death of Jack Nash on the motu, how his life changed. Just a wonderfully told collection.

Eugene Burdick not only was the author or co author of The Ugly American & Fail Safe among other works, he was a skilled and sympathetic observer of the people who populate the Pacific. Having lived and worked in the Philippines myself for three years, his assessment of the Malay disposition, even as it has morphed forty years on, is still stunning in its precision. This collection of essays and stories is a wonderful amalgym of the sense of endless beauty that the Pacific Basin elicits and the subdued tragedies that erupt when world pictures collide. It is almost like watching the dark thundering offshore storms gathering south of Bohol even as you stand on stark white sand blinded by a searing sun. Eugene is a worthy successor to Maugham.