Talk:Sailing Alone Around the World

message: I've made two changed to the article:
1) Moved the literary genre of travel literature from the "see also" into the main body of the text. It is common and well established on many  articles on Wikipedia to mention the genre or type of work in question in the first sentence and not just say it is a "book", but rather a "mystery novel" or some literary genre like that. Travel literature is more specific and more precise than just "book". Other examples on Wikipedia available on request.
2) Moved the date into a parenthesis at the end of the title- this is more professional and how it is usually done in professional encyclopedias. Saying "was a book written in 1900" is wordy and again, not as clean and professional as it could be.
-- Stbalbach 21:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 2 changes

message: "Ethnic Europeans warned him" makes it sound as if there is some kind of subterranean racist script being played out here, but it doesn't say so explicitly. If anyone has read the book, and can VERIFY that such a script is easily seen, that any reader would "get it," then just put that in the description. If, on the other hand, such a script has to be inferred by some sort of post-colonial sleight of hand, then this description should be replaced with something neutral like, "Passing by Tierra del Fuego, he was warned...". The job in an article like this is surely to DESCRIBE not to INTERPRET. And of all the incidents in the book, why pick on this one as an exemplar of Slocum's self-sufficiency and quick-wittedness? Why not something else? Theonemacduff (talk) 05:04, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've read the book. Simultaneously, you're right (in wanting to analyze the assumptions involved) but the article's current phrasing isn't wrong. Yes, racism was involved, although it was also a crime/piracy thing. But I'm going to edit the phrasing to your suggested phrasing because it sidesteps a digression into analyzing the assumptions within this article. Regarding that analysis, there are several factors involved. One is that his lifetime was a very colonial era throughout the world. There was an us-against-them mentality between the colonial people and the indigenous people. Racism is still common today, but it was 100x magnified back then. To evoke what I'm trying to express on this point, I would point to Apartheid as an example. Back then things like that were going strong, the fabric of many minds. If you visit 1890s Johannesburg (for example), most white people are going to tell you to "watch out for the blacks", and it doesn't surprise you, because, well, look who you're talking to (this plugs into your point about "any reader would 'get it'"). Slocum himself was not above or beyond his own era. We experience complexity today when we admire people of the past, at least for certain aspects of their character (such as admiring Slocum for his sailing skills and self-sufficiency), even though if you teleported them through space-time to today and tried to have a conversation with them that got into race and gender, it would be Quite Awkward. (For example, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson fought for liberty and democracy but were simultaneously slave owners and probably would think it wrong that women should vote. Hmmm, do we admire this person or not? Complex; yes for some reasons and no for others. For what it's worth, they're "the good guys" compared to the reactionaries and totalitarians of the world.) I'm not even going to try, at this moment, to touch on this in the article's phrasing (which plugs into your point "then just put that in the description"), because it's just going to sound to some other reader N months from now like bashing Slocum unduly (they would think it was some kind of bias; it takes whole articles to talk about such complexities without seeming biased, such as the articles Thomas Jefferson and slavery and George Washington and slavery). But another factor with Slocum at Tierra del Fuego, too, beyond racism, was a lawful-people-vs-crime antipiracy factor. You can detest pirates for committing violence and robbery against you (or trying to) as its own motivating factor, even without racism. To evoke what I'm trying to express on this point, I would point to the present-day piracy in Somalia problem. If some guy in a speed boat comes to your boat and sticks a gun in your face and holds you hostage, he's a bad guy (black hat vs white hat) regardless of race. Some people might counter that both hats are gray and he's Robin Hood, but that argument is a whole can of worms in itself and never really ends until it reaches all the way into "your 'terrorist' is my 'freedom fighter'." Again with the complexity. But of course, someone who is racist anyway, besides, (especially in the 1890s), would say, "See, piracy—that's what you get from 'Them'." Anyway ... Regards — ¾-10 18:37, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnic Europeans??? 

message: Text and references copied from Strait of Magellan to Sailing Around the World,  See former article's history for a list of contributors. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 01:47, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Attribution

message: The article lacks critical (in the proper professional sense) assessment of the book.  There is probably useful source in the recent major biography (2017), which is highly regarded by nautical historian acquaintances (though outside my field), apparently drawing on newly available family material and other previous overlooked sources. No doubt this will help interested editors improve this article.
Stan Grayson "A Man for All Oceans - Captain Joshua Slocum and the First Solo Voyage Around the World" pub Tilbury House Publishers and the New Bedford Whaling Museum (isbn 978-0-88448-548-3) 401pp. 
Press Herald review.  Davidships (talk) 12:53, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Critical assessment