Rating: 
Summary: Not a swashbuckler but a great insight to fur & lumber trade
Review: This book is dry, but then life on a boat is probably not all that exciting. You do have time to watch paint dry, and wood rot, and canvas sag while waiting for a breeze. What I liked about this book was the description of California before it became "civilized". If you are looking for close calls with pirates, and lots of rambo action, look elsewhere. If you like history books that tell it like it was, then this is for you. Moby Dick is a good litnus test, if you liked Moby Dick, you'll like this, if not skip on to something else.
Rating: 
Summary: A very important book
Review: This book should have a much higher spot on the list of defining American works than it presently occupies. Why beat kids up with Moby Dick when this book exists? This book is a great read, but also ties in with many historical concepts. Always look for the version that includes Dana's essay on his return to California after the gold rush. The change is mind blowing. What is most remarkable about this book is that it has aged so little. Dana provides very modern humanistic views in this book, and most remarkably, after returning to Boston actually becomes an activist for sailor's rights.
Rating: 
Summary: Thare She Blows!
Review: This book was so boring it was unmetionable. I bought this book because everyone said it was a great "american" classic. The first half of the book was great, the second half you could probably throw away. I don't understand why everyone else hails it as a classic, but this book is the most droll, boring, and repetitive book I have ever read in my entire life. If for whatever reason, you wish to find out exactly how a sailor lived, then go ahead, its a great book. But if think that reading 500+ pages about some guys life on the water that entails, eating, sleeping, and taking a sail up and down....then perhaps you would also like to see PAINT DRY!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Moby Dick, but just as boring
Review: This story of an educated man doing the work of a common seaman in the 1830's takes it's place with Melville's tome. It seems to go on forever and ever describing the finest details of sailing and shipping furs. Just how much does the reader want to know about this especially when we get described repreatedly which sail and which wind, and how long they sat motionless in the water, and on and on. Somehow I felt compelled to keep reading, in hopes of finding some action or excitement. A few pirates would help, especially if they had peglegs or obnoxious parrots. Oh well, it's a different style than Robert Louis Stevenson or even "A Perfect Storm."
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book that takes place in my area.
Review: This was the story of Richard Henry Dana who the doctor recomends to sign up to become a sailior. He goes on the ship the Pilgrim which has hide trade and he tales of the hardships of the sea. A few years ago my school had a field trip to the replica to the Pilgrim and we got to stay over night to see how it felt to be a sailior. I was in a group called the hidegathers and we got to go out in a small rowboat..it was quite exciting.
Rating:
Summary: Best Non fiction book ever read
Review: Two Years Before the Mast is one of my favorite books in the world. It gives a lot of important details about what it was like at sea for Richard Henry Dana. It tells that back in the old days, sailors had no rights to do anything but what the captain said.
Rating:
Summary: Why should you read this book?
Review: Why should you read this book? Yes, it is a classic. Yes, it documents the wonderful, adventurous time of the clipper ship. But that's not why you should read it. Richard Henry Dana must have been a most extraordinary man. While attending Harvard as a young man, his eyesight became weak and his health declined. He decided that the austere prescription of salt air and plain hard work would be the cure. Not many would give up comfort and privelege, but for two years, Dana served as a common sailor, given no special treatment as the gentleman he was, and lived in the forecastle of the Alert, eating the mess of salt beef and common hardtack, risking his life and serving under a captain crueler than most. Dana was able to write in such a way as to re-create the life on board a sailing ship, down to the smallest details and that's what makes this book so real and touching. You can feel the cold of Tierra del Fuego, taste the salt beef, and feel the wind and damp. What's more amazing is that Dana's carefully-kept journal was lost along with his other mementos of his voyage when he landed back on shore in Boston, due to some tragic carelessness of someone he entrusted with his chest of belongings. Yet he was able to recreate his voyage in loving detail and in some very excellent writing. Dana's later life as a lawyer was far from happy, though he made some critical contributions to maritime law. He died a poor and disappointed man, but left us the richer with his book. I just re-read it again for the tenth time, and it is fresher than ever. Read it along side of Moby Dick. It's American literature and American history and culture at its very best.
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