The Mortal Sea

Author : W. Jeffrey Bolster
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674070461
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Mortal Sea written by W. Jeffrey Bolster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world. While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the effects of this siren's song from its medieval European origins to the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the beginning of the twentieth century. Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the species that live within it, can be restored for future generations.

Author : W. Jeffrey. Bolster
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674028473
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Black Jacks written by W. Jeffrey. Bolster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Americans, black or white, recognize the degree to which early African American history is a maritime history. W. Jeffrey Bolster shatters the myth that black seafaring in the age of sail was limited to the Middle Passage. Seafaring was one of the most significant occupations among both enslaved and free black men between 1740 and 1865. Tens of thousands of black seamen sailed on lofty clippers and modest coasters. They sailed in whalers, warships, and privateers. Some were slaves, forced to work at sea, but by 1800 most were free men, seeking liberty and economic opportunity aboard ship.Bolster brings an intimate understanding of the sea to this extraordinary chapter in the formation of black America. Because of their unusual mobility, sailors were the eyes and ears to worlds beyond the limited horizon of black communities ashore. Sometimes helping to smuggle slaves to freedom, they were more often a unique conduit for news and information of concern to blacks.But for all its opportunities, life at sea was difficult. Blacks actively contributed to the Atlantic maritime culture shared by all seamen, but were often outsiders within it. Capturing that tension, Black Jacks examines not only how common experiences drew black and white sailors together--even as deeply internalized prejudices drove them apart--but also how the meaning of race aboard ship changed with time. Bolster traces the story to the end of the Civil War, when emancipated blacks began to be systematically excluded from maritime work. Rescuing African American seamen from obscurity, this stirring account reveals the critical role sailors played in helping forge new identities for black people in America.An epic tale of the rise and fall of black seafaring, Black Jacks is African Americans' freedom story presented from a fresh perspective.

Author : Christopher L. Pastore
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674281411
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Between Land and Sea written by Christopher L. Pastore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Pastore traces how Narragansett Bay’s ecology shaped the contours of European habitation, trade, and resource use, and how littoral settlers in turn, over two centuries, transformed a marshy fractal of water and earth into a clearly defined coastline, which proved less able to absorb the blows of human initiative and natural variation.

Author : Nathaniel Philbrick
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1440649103
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sea of Glory written by Nathaniel Philbrick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-10-26 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A treasure of a book."—David McCullough The harrowing story of a pathbreaking naval expedition that set out to map the entire Pacific Ocean, dwarfing Lewis and Clark with its discoveries, from the New York Times bestselling author of Valiant Ambition and In the Hurricane's Eye. A New York Times Notable Book America's first frontier was not the West; it was the sea, and no one writes more eloquently about that watery wilderness than Nathaniel Philbrick. In his bestselling In the Heart of the Sea Philbrick probed the nightmarish dangers of the vast Pacific. Now, in an epic sea adventure, he writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen—the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842. On a scale that dwarfed the journey of Lewis and Clark, six magnificent sailing vessels and a crew of hundreds set out to map the entire Pacific Ocean and ended up naming the newly discovered continent of Antarctica, collecting what would become the basis of the Smithsonian Institution. Combining spellbinding human drama and meticulous research, Philbrick reconstructs the dark saga of the voyage to show why, instead of being celebrated and revered as that of Lewis and Clark, it has—until now—been relegated to a footnote in the national memory. Winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize

Author : Joseph Nigg
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226925188
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sea Monsters written by Joseph Nigg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mythic creature expert and author of Phoenix takes readers through a bestiary of sea monsters featured on the famous 16th century map Carta Marina. In the sixteenth century, sea serpents, giant man-eating lobsters, and other monsters were thought to swim the waters of Norther Europe, threatening seafarers who ventured too far from shore. Thankfully, Scandinavian mariners had Olaus Magnus, who in 1539 charted these fantastic marine animals in his influential map of the Nordic countries, the Carta Marina. In Sea Monsters, mythologist Joseph Nigg brings readers face-to-face with these creatures and other magnificent components of Magnus’s map. Nearly two meters wide in total, the map’s nine wood-block panels comprise the largest and first realistic portrayal of the region. But in addition to its important geographic significance, Magnus’s map goes beyond cartography to scenes both domestic and mystic. Close to shore, Magnus shows humans interacting with common sea life—boats struggling to stay afloat, merchants trading, children swimming, and fisherman pulling lines. But from the offshore deeps rise some of the most terrifying sea creatures imaginable—like sea swine, whales as large as islands, and the Kraken. In this book, Nigg draws on Magnus’s own text to further describe and illuminate these inventive scenes and to flesh out the stories of the monsters. Sea Monsters is a stunning tour of a world that still holds many secrets for us land dwellers, who will forever be fascinated by reports of giant squid and the real-life creatures of the deep that have proven to be as bizarre and otherworldly as we have imagined for centuries. It is a gorgeous guide for enthusiasts of maps, monsters, and the mythic. “[A] beautiful new exploration of the Carta Marina.”—Wired

Author : Samantha Hunt
Publisher : Tin House Books
ISBN 13 : 1941040969
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Seas written by Samantha Hunt and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller "The Seas took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you’re newly falling in love with literature, newly shocked by its capacity to cast a spell..." ?Maggie Nelson (from the Introduction) A Most Anticipated Book of Summer at BuzzFeed, NYLON, and more. Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She’s often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid. True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior.The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend. With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.

Author : W. Jeffrey Bolster
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674047656
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Mortal Sea written by W. Jeffrey Bolster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world. While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the effects of this siren's song from its medieval European origins to the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the beginning of the twentieth century. Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the species that live within it, can be restored for future generations.

Author : Thomas Cahill
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307755126
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea written by Thomas Cahill and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-04-21 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization takes us on a journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago. “A triumph of popularization: extraordinarily knowledgeable, informal in tone, amusing, wide ranging, smartly paced.” —The New York Times Book Review In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation—yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and suggest that their “bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons” is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of “shock and awe.” And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and freely flowing wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview.

Author : Henry Major Tomlinson
Publisher : New York, The Modern library [1928]
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Sea and the Jungle written by Henry Major Tomlinson and published by New York, The Modern library [1928]. This book was released on 1928 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Stefan Helmreich
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520942604
Total Pages : 423 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alien Ocean written by Stefan Helmreich and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists, worlds usually out of sight and reach: the deep sea, the microscopic realm, and oceans beyond national boundaries. Working alongside scientists at sea and in labs in Monterey Bay, Hawai'i, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Sargasso Sea and at undersea volcanoes in the eastern Pacific, Stefan Helmreich charts how revolutions in genomics, bioinformatics, and remote sensing have pressed marine biologists to see the sea as animated by its smallest inhabitants: marine microbes. Thriving in astonishingly extreme conditions, such microbes have become key figures in scientific and public debates about the origin of life, climate change, biotechnology, and even the possibility of life on other worlds.