Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean (2010)

Some interesting stories in here - quite a few were familiar, but just as many weren't and I put the book down feeling that I'd increased my general knowledge about the Atlantic quite a bit. Some aspects of the book made me a little uncomfortable: the very Euro-centric (Anglo-centric) point of view, for example which is understandable given that the writer is a Brit, but made me feel that the inhabitants of other continents around the ocean had been short-changed. A good example of this is in the case of the book's dedication to a Scot who died in the Dunedin Star rescue alongside a Namibian man, Mathias Khoraseb, who only seems to get mentioned in passing. I also found the personal anecdotes tedious at times, although some of them were interesting. And I don't think the use of Shakespeare's ages of man was

I was reading the ebook version of this and the editing was a bit off in places - wrong words sometimes and a puzzling use of 'her' to refer to George II at one point!

Overall, an interesting read, but with a background level of irritation which stops it being a really good one. ( )

An excellent read. A great perspective on history, politics, etc. The author brings you into the moment and in some cases incorporates his own experiences. Highly recommended. ( )

What an adventure Winchester takes his readers on with his Atlantic. Covering a myriad of topics from Pangaea and the formation of the Atlantic ocean, to exploration, naval battles, climate change, the arts and literature which depict the Atlantic to the eventual end of the ocean when the continents reform into another supercontinent, this is a well researched book written with an obvious passion for the subject.

As the subtitle suggests, this is not an exhaustive biography, but a fascinating exploration of many of the ways people have interacted with the Atlantic Ocean.

I particularly enjoyed the chapters on exploration and the fisheries of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and around the South Georgia and South Sandwich Island groups. The chapter covering the representations of the Atlantic in literature and the arts was one of the weaker ones. Winchester’s writing is generally engaging and with his own enthusiasm he pulls the reader along with him.

I would have liked to see the inclusion of colour images, as some of the black and white ones aren’t particularly clear, as well as a map to accompany Winchester’s descriptions of the technical boundaries of the Atlantic Ocean. The one section I thought was missing from Atlantic was on the flora and fauna, even just to highlight some of the more unsual species that call this ocean home.

With such a broad scope I found this a hugely interesting and at various points a thought provoking book. Some reviews have suggested this is perhaps not Winchester’s finest book, so I’ll definitely pick up more from him. ( )

After reading The Surgeon of Crowthorne a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to more, so I dove into Atlantic: A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, also by Simon Winchester. This is a book about the Atlantic Ocean, and everything about it. Geology, history, politics, war, discovery, sailing, flying, animals, humans, weather, you name it, it is mentioned. The book is divided into chapters based on life, starting with birth and ending in death. But in those chapters everything can be covered. Sometimes this made the book very chaotic, Winchester followed any lead that he found interesting, sometimes telling something historic, before moving on to biology and then telling an anecdote from his personal travels or relationships. I didn’t really like this, and think that it is worse than in The Surgeon of Crowthorne. Maybe this also had to do with my reading mood, I’ve had trouble finding the time to read and concentrate, which is something this book deserves. Yesterday I got some reading mojo back and read the second half of the book in two sittings. Three out of four stars. ( )

The "big picture" history book most popular these days is the magical mystery tour variety. These narratives combine a bunch of things - biography, science, cultural studies, geography, travelogue, personal essays, military studies, and traditional history - via a common nexus. It's usually, oddly, a food - cod, salt, coffee, spices.

Winchester's nexus is a body of water, but it works the same way. Bored with one topic, 20 pages later you're on to a new one.

I don't have anything against these kind of books, but, as the saying goes, "too many books, too little time". The only reason I read this one was Winchester's formal training as a geologist and his enjoyable The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, a biography of biostratigraphy's inventor.

And I wasn't disappointed. Winchester frames his story between the Atlantic's geological past and its projected future. In between, using the conceit of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man, we get the story of that ocean's influence on science, exploration, business, and warfare. That means, among other things, slavery, pirates, oceanography, whaling, Vikings, Basques, Spanish colonization, submarine warfare, Trafalgar, transatlantic flights, shipping containers, and the Skeleton Coast,

My favorite parts were, besides the geology, the business section with the American development of packet ships and the laying of the first transatlantic submarine cables. I was also entertained by Winchester's personal reminisces of being a geology student literally stranded in the wilds of Greenland with the prospect of wintering there and a gloating Argentinean naval officer he met while imprisoned during the Falklands War.

But it was all well written with no section too long to wear out your patience -- or satisfy a deep curiosity on a subject. That's the nature of these books.

Winchester does address a couple of important contemporary issues. He gives an account on how the Newfoundland Bank cod fishery collapsed and the possibility of other fisheries being protected on the model of the British administration of the waters around South Georgia Island. He gives a nuanced look at the possible perils of global warming - while not unskeptically throwing his lot in with the anthropogenic warming crowd or faithfully thinking that carbon trading will work. He also shows, whatever the truth about global warming and its cause, it doesn't seem well linked to increased incidence of hurricanes. ( )