Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories

In Simon Winchester's latest book he takes on quite a challenge. How to you tell the story of something vast and multifaceted as the Atlantic Ocean? It is a testimony to Winchester's skill as a writer that he develops a novel approach and executes it for a very readable and engaging book, Atlantic.
Winchester first choose to view the ocean as a living thing, not too unusual as mariners regularly take this view. But then Winchester hits on the brilliant idea to frame the Atlantic ocean in the seven ages of man. These ages were described in a monologue by William Shakespeare's character, Jacques, in As You Like It.
These ages are:

Infancy - first stirrings of human development on its shores
Childhood - crossings and full fledge explorations
show more Lover - the ocean beauty in art and literature
Soldier - centuries as a stage for warfare
Justice - basis of trade and international law
Old Age - crossings are routine and resources no longer inexhaustible
Mental dementia and death - climate change and humanity's change

In each of these stages Winchester mixes the broad perspective with anecdotal stories to enliven the story and provide the reader with interesting facts.
In summary, Simon Winchester has succeeded in taking on the story of the Atlantic. show less

Oceans have always held a certain mystique for me. I've lived most of my life around the Chesapeake Bay, tidewater Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico, so there's something in me that resonates with the waves. Spending time on the water is something I rarely get to do, but always attracts me, and one of these days I'm going to learn to sail. So when Simon Winchester, author of the excellent Krakatoa among many others, wrote a biography of the Atlantic Ocean, it didn't take long to add it to my reading list.

Winchester calls this book a biography and uses the Shakespearean ages of man to frame the story of human interaction with the Atlantic through early history through modern day and into the near future. It's an interesting approach - show more treating this geological feature as a living entity that changes and grows and ages - that allows for discussion of how *we've* changed in our thoughts, beliefs and uses of the Atlantic. This approach runs the risk of anthropomorphizing an inanimate collection of chemistry, geology and biology, but Winchester doesn't fall into that trap. The book's more about us than about the ocean.

The other risk of such a work is the potential for descent into polemic. Any discussion of the history of human interaction with the Atlantic naturally has to touch on climate change and the impact of centuries of sometimes thoughtless or uncaring use of the resources there. Winchester doesn't flinch from subjects like the annihilation of cod fishing off Newfoundland from incredibly stupid resource management, but he also tells when the opposite is true - like the protection of the fish marketed as Chilean sea bass off the Falkland Islands. There's also a nice discussion of documentable changes in the Atlantic that are related to warming in the atmosphere and water and how these changes affect human both on the water and on land; this discussion stays factual and makes it clear that there's a lot we don't understand about the connection between greenhouse gas buildup and changes in the Atlantic, but also clearly makes the point that there is indeed a connection.

At the end of the day, Winchester leaves the Atlantic in an unknown place. We don't know what the end result of human-induced changes will be. We don't know how natural cycles will affect the ocean as we know it now. We seem to be changing our priorities in interacting with the ocean and in how we manage resources, but it may be too late to fix some problems. Ultimately, though, the Atlantic will be here long after we are - until the continents shift enough to rearrange the face of the Earth. show less

Winchester took on a huge, and probably impossible, task in "Atlantic". Telling the history of this ocean clearly isn't something that can be accomplished in one book.

That said, the author once again makes what could have been a dreary, boring tale of statistics into an intimate and interesting story, using the Seven Ages of Man as his controlling metaphor. This reader, at least, was pulled along and found very few dragging spots.

Among other aspects of the Atlantic, Winchester discusses the slave trade and the destruction of the Outer Banks cod fisheries--for both of which mankind should be deeply ashamed--to demonstrate mankind's more disgusting uses of what should be one of our greatest treasures.

All in all, a worthwhile read. I could show more have done with much more about the flora and fauna, but that's my own prejudice. show less

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 show more 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. show less

It's an odd sort of history that focuses not on any one civilization or time period but on their absence. This ambitious work seeks to recount the history of the Atlantic, beginning with its formation by the splitting of the continents and concluding with its ultimate death by their eventual reunion. In between the author will touch upon many peoples and subjects. Travel, exploration, fishing, warfare and discovery. This book is fascinating and multifaceted though not uniformally interesting. Some parts dragged for me, while I wanted others to be longer. A masterful, and ultimately thought provoking look at the ocean that divides the old world from the new.

I love Simon Winchester: Best selling author, broadcaster, journalist at The Guardian. I've been lucky enough to hear him speak and found him charming and delightful. A biography of the Atlantic Ocean would seem a huge and daunting task, even to such an accomplished writer. He fairly says as much while explaining his decision to use Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" as an organizing literary device. We see the youth of early geological formation and exploration, the soldiers of the many wars waged on her expanse and are given a hint of her tectonic demise. Throughout is a fact-o-rama of tidbits, tales, personal stories and anecdotes. If one 'age' doesn't catch your fancy, stick around as Winchester quickly moves along to yet another show more interesting and unknown account. Some narratives worked less well for me than others. I would suggest this as a book to graze through rather than trying to swallow in one large gulp. show less

This is another wonderful narrative about a topic by one of the best non-fiction authors of our times. Simon Winchester weaves together not only his own personal experiences with the Atlantic Ocean, but tells a tale that encompases a wide range of topics (geology, history, archeaology, biology, economics, and geopolitics) into a seamless whole. I found the information fascinating. What I enjoyed was how Winchester tackled a topic as broad as an ocean. He uses the seven stages of a man's life (infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, slippered pantaloon, and second childishness) from the monologue given by Jaques from William Shakespear's play, "As You Like It". This splits up the story into seven different parts, and allows show more Winchester to combine similar stories about the Atlantic based on the "life" of a man. This was a wonderful way to create a metaphor about the Atlantic, and to convey so many seemingly different stories and information into a cohesive tale. I highly recommend this book. show less