Daren
Having read Simon Winchester's ‘Pacific' I had expected this book to follow a similar format, but it doesn't. Pacific was a series on unconnected stories from locations in the Pacific Ocean. This book does contain various stories from locations within the Atlantic, but it is far more heavily invested in an overall narrative (or more accurately several narratives).
For a framework Winchester has divided the book into sections paralleling the 7 stages of man, as listed in Shakespeare's As You Like It which seems somewhat arbitrary, but does sort of work as the life of an ocean - starting with ancient history and discovery and ended with environmental change and what mankind is doing to the ocean.
Winchester uses plenty of sources in history and science, but also manages to include in his narrative plenty of travels - whether that this the explorers of old or drawing from his own travels from the 1960s until now. He also writes of literary figures and their inspiration from and writing about the Atlantic, stories of overfishing and ocean management, pollution and climate change. Naval battles, shipwrecks, plate tectonics and vulcanology,
I certainly didn't read this book quickly. I found a couple of sections at a time was enough before I needed something else - reading 3 books between starting and finishing Winchester's offering. It isn't that it wasn't interesting and appealing, or even overly long at under 500 pages, it was just that it was a slow read. Even the action sections were slow, but then, he had a long history to cover.
There are a couple of decent maps, lots of small photographs and drawings which were ok, but don't make up for the lack of colour plates.
4 stars
Having read Simon Winchester's ‘Pacific' I had expected this book to follow a similar format, but it doesn't. Pacific was a series on unconnected stories from locations in the Pacific Ocean. This book does contain various stories from locations within the Atlantic, but it is far more heavily invested in an overall narrative (or more accurately several narratives).
For a framework Winchester has divided the book into sections paralleling the 7 stages of man, as listed in Shakespeare's As You Like It which seems somewhat arbitrary, but does sort of work as the life of an ocean - starting with ancient history and discovery and ended with environmental change and what mankind is doing to the ocean.
Winchester uses plenty of sources in history and science, but also manages to include in his narrative plenty of travels - whether that this the explorers of old or drawing from his own travels from the 1960s until now. He also writes of literary figures and their inspiration from and writing about the Atlantic, stories of overfishing and ocean management, pollution and climate change. Naval battles, shipwrecks, plate tectonics and vulcanology,
I certainly didn't read this book quickly. I found a couple of sections at a time was enough before I needed something else - reading 3 books between starting and finishing Winchester's offering. It isn't that it wasn't interesting and appealing, or even overly long at under 500 pages, it was just that it was a slow read. Even the action sections were slow, but then, he had a long history to cover.
There are a couple of decent maps, lots of small photographs and drawings which were ok, but don't make up for the lack of colour plates.
4 stars