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Cargando... Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories (2010)por Simon Winchester
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Like all of winchester's books, I found it interesting and well written. Had more breadth than depth, but with the immensity of the topic, perhaps unavoidable ( ) Part science, part history, this ambitious non-fiction includes almost every aspect of the Atlantic Ocean. It covers a diverse array of topics such as its origins, discovery of the gulf stream, early inventions for maritime navigation, explorations, famous shipwrecks, piracy, the slave trade, maritime battles, migration, commerce by ship and air, artistic and literary references, information dissemination, global warming, and predicted lifespan. The author includes many of his own anecdotes from his travels and time as a journalist. The book has its ups and downs. The amount of material covered is staggering. Certain sections are illuminating, while others are less successful. The author took a shotgun approach to relaying the material, and it was easy to get lost in the minutia. I was occasionally tempted to disengage while he cited various statistics. Listening to the audio book enhanced my enjoyment of this book that might otherwise have been a bit dull. Simon Winchester is an excellent reader with a mellifluous voice. Overall, I learned a great deal about the Atlantic and recommend the audio version to those interested in the science and history of the earth’s bodies of water. I didn't feel this book lived up to its title: "Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories". Part of my disappointment may have been thinking it would live up to the subtitle and be more exciting. The only part of the subtitle which seemed accurate was the part about "a million stories". Winchester covered a lot, perhaps too much, from the formation of the earth and oceans over the past millions of years to early man all the way through to using the oceans as a waste site. The facts were there, but the adventure was lacking. It was a challenging subject, no doubt. If you try an equivalent story on land, say starting in central Kansas and then going a thousand miles in any or all directions, you've got a wide variety of different terrain and climates, peoples and life forms to discuss. Winchester's book starts in the middle of the Atlantic, and if you go a thousand miles in any or all directions, you've pretty much got what you started with. So his work was cut out for him, and he does cover many aspects of the ocean and life around the ocean, but all in all, the story never quite came together for me.
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Until a thousand years ago, no humans ventured into the Atlantic or imagined traversing its vastness. But once the first daring mariners successfully navigated to far shores, whether it was the Vikings, the Irish, the Chinese, Christopher Columbus in the north, or the Portuguese and the Spanish in the south, the Atlantic evolved in the world's growing consciousness of itself as an enclosed body of water bounded by the Americas to the West, and by Europe and Africa to the East. This book is a biography of this immense space, of a sea which has defined and determined so much about the lives of the millions who live beside or near its tens of thousands of miles of coast. The Atlantic has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists and warriors, and it continues to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. The author chronicles that relationship, making the Atlantic come vividly alive.--From publisher description. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)551.4613Natural sciences and mathematics Earth sciences & geology Geology, Hydrology Meteorology Surface features of the earth Oceans Atlantic; North Sea; BalticClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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