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Atlantic; Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, And A Vast Ocean Of A Million Stories
by Winchester, Simon
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very good
- ISBN 10
- 0061702587
- ISBN 13
- 9780061702587
- Seller
-
Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Harper, 2010. Signed Edition/First Edition [stated], First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Setsuko Winchester (Author photograph). xiv, 495, [3] pages. Footnotes. Illustrated endapers. Maps. Illustrations. A Glossary of Possibly Unfamiliar Terms. Bibliography. Index. Signed by the author on s special signed edition page specially bound by the publisher. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Simon Winchester, OBE (born 28 September 1944), is a British author and journalist who resides in Massachusetts, in the United States. Through his career at The Guardian, Winchester covered numerous significant events, including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. As an author, Winchester has written or contributed to more than thirty nonfiction books, has written one novel, and his articles have appeared in several travel publications, including Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic. Winchester's time in Northern Ireland placed him around several events of The Troubles, including the events of Bloody Sunday and the Belfast Hour of Terror. In 1982, while working as chief foreign feature writer for The Sunday Times, Winchester was on location for the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentine forces. Suspected of being a spy, Winchester was held as a prisoner in Tierra del Fuego for three months. Derived from a Kirkus review: The prolific journalist and historian returns with a story both geographically immense and profoundly personal. Winchester offers a tale about the Atlantic Ocean that is variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring. He begins with a memory from 1963—his youthful transatlantic crossing aboard the passenger liner Empress of Britain—and returns to the birth of the Atlantic, perhaps 540 million years ago, providing a history of its formation and development. Winchester then looks at humans' "infant" acquaintance with the ocean, noting that people first settled its shores about 164,000 years ago on the western coast of Africa. They soon ventured out on the ocean, then endeavored to cross it—the Irish could have done it, he says, but there's no hard evidence. The author chronicles the stories of Leif Eriksson, John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci, and notes that the "schoolboy" phase of the Atlantic's life includes our attempts to understand it—to chart it, measure it, discover its mineral, vegetable and animal bounties and puzzle over its mysteries. For the "lover" phase of the Atlantic's history, Winchester sails across centuries of literature, art and music that in some sense celebrate the ocean. The "soldier" phase involves warfare on and around the Atlantic, from the Vikings to the Falklands. The "justice" section examines maritime laws of various sorts, from fishing to trade to communication. The concluding chapters deal with the depletion of the ocean, and the author projects a tone of both warning and hope. Throughout, Winchester sprinkles passages of personal history, none more powerful than the epilogue about Namibia's Skeleton Coast, "a place so named because of all the skeletons, of both men and the vessels in which they had wrecked." A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Ground Zero Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 86994
- Title
- Atlantic; Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, And A Vast Ocean Of A Million Stories
- Author
- Winchester, Simon
- Illustrator
- Setsuko Winchester (Author photograph)
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Signed Edition/First Edition [stated], First printing [stated]
- ISBN 10
- 0061702587
- ISBN 13
- 9780061702587
- Publisher
- Harper
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2010
- Keywords
- Atlantic Ocean, Mogador, Oceanography, Maritime, Nautical, Lighthouse, Viking, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Pirate, Cape Coast Castle, Horatio Nelson, Battle of Jutland, Hanseatic League, Rachel Carson, Cape Verde, Andrea Doria, Clipper Ship, Ocean Liner
Terms of Sale
Ground Zero Books
Books are offered subject to prior sale. Satisfaction guaranteed. If you notify us within 7 days that you are not satisfied with your purchase, we will refund your purchase price when you return the item in the condition in which it was sold.
About the Seller
Ground Zero Books
Biblio member since 2005
Silver Spring, Maryland
About Ground Zero Books
Founded and operated by trained historians, Ground Zero Books, Ltd., has for over 30 years served scholars, collectors, universities, and all who are interested in military and political history.
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Much of our diverse stock is not yet listed on line. If you can't locate the book or other item that you want, please contact us. We may well have it in stock. We welcome your want lists, and encourage you to send them to us.