- In the Heart of the Sea spent more than 4 months on The New York Times bestseller list and was a Boston Globe, New York Daily News, New York Newsday, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller
A captivating tale spanning 5,000 years of the oceans' history, "The Conquest of the Ocean" tells the stories of the remarkable individuals who sailed seas, for trade, to conquer new lands, to explore the unknown.
From the early Polynesians to the first circumnavigations by the Portuguese and the British, these are awe-inspiring tales of epic sea voyages involving great feats of seamanship, navigation, endurance, and ingenuity. Explore the lives and maritime adventures, many with first-person narratives of land seekers and globe charters such as Christopher Columbus, Captain James Cook, and Vitus Bering.
The classic minute-by-minute account of the sinking of the Titanic, in a 50th anniversary edition with a new introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick
First published in 1955, A Night to Remember remains a completely riveting account of the Titanic's fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain. Available for the first time in trade paperback and with a new introduction for the 50th anniversary edition by Nathaniel Phil-brick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and Sea of Glory, Walter Lord's classic minute-by-minute re-creation is as vivid now as it was upon first publication fifty years ago. From the initial distress flares to the struggles of those left adrift for hours in freezing waters, this semicentennial edition brings that moonlit night in 1912 to life for a new generation of readers.
In the 1890s Captain Joshua Slocum, an ageing Massachussetts merchantman, was the first man to circumnavigate the globe single-handed. He did so in a 37-foot sailboat he had rebuilt from a derelict oyster sloop. He set down the story of his odyssey in this volume.
In the midst of the standard midlife crisis -- complete with wine tasting courses, yoga classes, and a failed attempt at a first novel -- forty-year-old Barry Strauss fails unexpectedly and passionately in love with rowing, a sport in which even a twenty-seven-year-old is considered a has-been.
Strauss, a classics professor, writes about the unanticipated delights of an affair that, like so many others, begins as a casual dalliance and develops into a full-blown obsession. Drawn to the sport in part because of his affinity for Greek antiquity, he develops a hankering for old boathouses, a longing for rivers at dawn, a thirst to test himself, and ultimately a renewed sense of self-reliance -- as someone who had experienced sports humiliation back as far as Little League suddenly finds himself bursting into athleticism at an unlikely age.
From the awe-inspiring feats of the war-bound ancient Greek triremes with their crews of 172 men rowing on three levels, to the solitary pride of finishing a first race in which he gets stuck in the weeds and has to be fished out, Barry Strauss shows us why "there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half as much worth doing as simply messing about in boats".
Lakes Michigan and Superior, 49 dramatic and exciting shipewrecks tales, 75 color and 57 b&w photos, archival and underwater, 284 pages. Also: The Most Hunted Wrecks.
"Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" vividly recreates one of the most extraordinary adventure stories in history.
In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton and 27 men sailed from England in an attempt to become the first team of explorers to cross the Antarctic continent from one side to the other. Five months later and still 100 miles from land, their ship, "Endurance," became trapped. The expedition survived an Antarctic winter in the icebound ship, then, after "Endurance" sank, five months camped on the ice followed by a perilous boat journey through storms and icebergs to remote and unvisited Elephnat Island, 600 miles from Cape Horn. From there, their only hope was for someone to fetch help. In a dramatic climax to this amazing survival story, Shackleton and five others navigated 800 miles of the treacherous open ocean in a 20-foot boat and then hiked across the unmapped, glacier-strewn interior of South Georgia Island to a whaling station. In August 1916, 19 months after "Endurance "first became icebound, Shackleton led a rescue party back to Elephant Island for his men.
Jennifer Armstrong narrates these almost unbelievable events with vigor, an eye for detail, and an appreciation of the marvelous leadership of Ernest Shackleton, who brought home every one of his men alive. With them survived a remarkable archive of photographs of the expedition, more than forty of which are reproduced here.
