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Back to topAtlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories (Paperback)
Summer 2012 Reading Group
“This book, like its subject, is both sprawling and majestic. To reinforce his view of the ocean as a living thing, Winchester terms his book a 'biography of the ocean.' His life story of the Atlantic begins with the ocean's very formation. In later ages, he discusses such diverse topics as exploration, piracy, slavery, and conflict. Winchester writes with both beauty and authority, and his love of the ocean is so clearly expressed that readers nearly smell the salt! This is a masterpiece!”
— Christopher Rose, Andover Bookstore, Andover, MA
November 2010 Indie Next List
“This book, like its subject, is both sprawling and majestic. To reinforce his view of the ocean as a living thing, Winchester terms his book a 'biography of the ocean.' His life story of the Atlantic begins with the ocean's very formation. In later ages, he discusses such diverse topics as exploration, piracy, slavery, and conflict. Winchester writes with both beauty and authority, and his love of the ocean is so clearly expressed that readers nearly smell the salt! A masterpiece!”
— Christopher Rose, Andover Bookstore, Andover, MA
Description
"Variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring…A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Blending history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and exposition, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester tells the breathtaking saga of the Atlantic Ocean. A gifted storyteller and consummate historian, Winchester sets the great blue sea's epic narrative against the backdrop of mankind's intellectual evolution, telling not only the story of an ocean, but the story of civilization. Fans of Winchester's Krakatoa, The Man Who Loved China, and The Professor and the Madman will love this masterful, penetrating, and resonant tale of humanity finding its way across the ocean of history.
About the Author
Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.
Praise For…
“Winchester brings a knowledge as vast and deep as his subject to this history of the Atlantic Ocean.” — Entertainment Weekly