A Sense of the World, bio of pioneering explorer James Holman; Sightless & Fearless

A SENSE of the WORLD is the remarkable life & travels of James Holman.  Holman (b. Britain 1786) is the 1st blind person to span the globe to every inhabited continent.  His life appears incredulous,  sightless, intermittently crippled, he traversed the seas & foreign lands independantly.  Jason Roberts (b. Amer.) is the author of A SENSE of the WORLD, which earned a Nat'l Book Award nom.  By any account, his travels & struggles should lend themselves to a riveting tale of adventure & discovery.  Alas, I was anchored down by the minutia attached to his feckless plans & wrangled means for maneuvering himself.  His impressive exploits were downplayed.  Ensued blindness was stigmatized.  The vast blind population survived as mendicants. "He was expected to do nothing but sit quietly for the remainder of his life."  Taking to the seas appeared far more appealing the young impoverished seaman rendered restless with few options.  He seemed more resourceful than courageous; an opportunist willing to travel alone relying on assistance from strangers.  I was put off by Roberts' assumptions of how blind people are perceived.  "The notion is that they spend their lives in that uncertain, unsettling state."  Roberts contends his book "documents not just a profoundly inspiring figure, but one of history's most richly lived lives."  I enjoyed the historical context during the time of Holman's travels.  The skirmishes at sea that continued to plaque Americans after the Amer. Revolution.  The British continued to abduct sailors from American vessels.  His Majesty did not acknowledge his subjects the right to revoke their British citizenship.  The barbaric medical treatments of the day were also eye opening; lancings to the eyes, leeching, scolding of skin & blood letting.  Holman relied on observations from others to record his encounters he had published with some success from 1819-1832.  I recommend skimming over A SENSE of the WORLD & glancing at Holman's own writings.