A fictionalized biography. This is the one I knew the least about going into, because I still have never seen a physical copy of this book! I listened to some lady on Youtube read this one and honestly, it was pretty decent. I can't imagine how the publisher hoped to suck in the young 'uns - but for someone with my nerdy tastes this book was pretty good.
Mr. Bowditch was a naturally gifted mathematician who was unable to fulfill his childhood dream of attending Harvard due to his father setting him up in an apprenticeship during hard times.
However, he didn't let this stand in the way of learning - I dare say he doubled down. He taught himself calculus... after first teaching himself Latin so he could read the calculus book. And then he learned French, Spanish, Portuguese... basically any language he fancied.
Being super skilled and familiar with ships thanks to his family and apprenticeship, he joined a crew as a ship's clerk. Being nerdy he also took navigational readings, taught the crew how to navigate, and invented a new method of navigation that worked without clear skies... as one does. He found so many errors in a book he was asked to check he decided to just up and write his own. He was so accurate that the Navy bought its copyright 65 years after it was first published!
In all this was a great book for nerds like me - but I'm not sure it has much kid appeal outside of a niche group that likes reading about guys that really, really love math.
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