Rating: 
Summary: "Mr. Christian, come here!"
Review: Most people's thoughts about the Bounty mutiny are inevitably based upon the Charles Laughton - Clark Gable movie. There we saw a tyrannical Capt. Bligh and an almost saintly Fletcher Christian. It seems that literature has painted Christian as the "hero' of sorts, with Bligh playing the "evil captain" part. This book attempts an even-handed explanation of what happened on the Bounty. Due to many contradictions in testimony, even from eyewitnesses, this was difficult, but the author has handled the situation quite well. The book reads, at times, like a novel, which makes page-turning a pleasure. All readers will certainly find something new about this famous mutiny within the pages of this book, and I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A Deeply Rewarding Meditation
Review: of the infamous Bounty Mutiny that eschews the ususal Hollywoodization of the drama (Fletcher Christian, handsome, romantic, agonized/Capt.(actually Lieut.)Bligh, cruel, dictatorial, insensitive. This book offers a reconsideration of the character of Bligh, especially placing it in the contemporary setting of 18th century naval life. It finds that the answer to why this mutiny happened must be assumed to lie within the psychology of Fletcher Christian, rather than any supposed shipboard tyranny of Bligh. The latter was, she points out, a student of Cook, and thus sparing of the lash as well as takiing pains to see that his crew was nourished, clean and well-exercised so that fatalities on the long voyage were minimized. Those who take their image of Bligh from Charles Laughton or Anthony Hopkins, might be amazed to learn that Bligh was all of 35 years old at the time of the voyage.
Along with her delineation of Bligh, the book offers a fascinating and probing portrait of Peter Heyward, a Bounty midshipman who somehow did not enter Bligh's launch and yet, through family connections, managed to get a King's pardon from his mutiny conviction.
Overall, this book offers a sober, grown-up examination of one of the most dramatic, romantic and still enigmatic episodes in British naval history. It would seem to be impossible to write a dull book about the Mutiny, and Caroline Alexander has written one of the best considerations of this endlessly fascinating event.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe more accurate, but less entertaining
Review: The factual differences between this and earlier versions were not apparent to me, and previous renditions are more entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling and interesting
Review: This is an informative and interesting presentation of Bligh's mission on the Bounty and the events which followed. The book lends particular focus on how the Haywood and Christian families "spun" the tale after the fact to make the mutineers seem more "noble" and Bligh more "evil". As far as I can tell, it's a straight-up, honest and well-researched account of what really happened.However, it does seem to me that the book spends proportionally too much time on the court martial and Peter Haywood's family and life, and not enough on the events onboard ship or on Pitcairn Island; I suppose this reflects the amount of material available on each. Further, the author assumes an understanding of geography and nautical terms that could be explicated by a glossary and more (and better placed) maps. And the narrative is quite jumpy, at least at first, going back and forth in time, when a straightforward approach would probably serve the reader better.
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