The Mortal Sea

Author : W. Jeffrey Bolster
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674070461
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Mortal Sea written by W. Jeffrey Bolster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world. While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the effects of this siren's song from its medieval European origins to the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the beginning of the twentieth century. Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the species that live within it, can be restored for future generations.

Author : W. Jeffrey. Bolster
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674028473
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Black Jacks written by W. Jeffrey. Bolster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Americans, black or white, recognize the degree to which early African American history is a maritime history. W. Jeffrey Bolster shatters the myth that black seafaring in the age of sail was limited to the Middle Passage. Seafaring was one of the most significant occupations among both enslaved and free black men between 1740 and 1865. Tens of thousands of black seamen sailed on lofty clippers and modest coasters. They sailed in whalers, warships, and privateers. Some were slaves, forced to work at sea, but by 1800 most were free men, seeking liberty and economic opportunity aboard ship.Bolster brings an intimate understanding of the sea to this extraordinary chapter in the formation of black America. Because of their unusual mobility, sailors were the eyes and ears to worlds beyond the limited horizon of black communities ashore. Sometimes helping to smuggle slaves to freedom, they were more often a unique conduit for news and information of concern to blacks.But for all its opportunities, life at sea was difficult. Blacks actively contributed to the Atlantic maritime culture shared by all seamen, but were often outsiders within it. Capturing that tension, Black Jacks examines not only how common experiences drew black and white sailors together--even as deeply internalized prejudices drove them apart--but also how the meaning of race aboard ship changed with time. Bolster traces the story to the end of the Civil War, when emancipated blacks began to be systematically excluded from maritime work. Rescuing African American seamen from obscurity, this stirring account reveals the critical role sailors played in helping forge new identities for black people in America.An epic tale of the rise and fall of black seafaring, Black Jacks is African Americans' freedom story presented from a fresh perspective.

Author : W. Jeffrey Bolster
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674047656
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Mortal Sea written by W. Jeffrey Bolster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world. While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the effects of this siren's song from its medieval European origins to the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the beginning of the twentieth century. Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the species that live within it, can be restored for future generations.

Author : Christopher L. Pastore
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674281411
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Between Land and Sea written by Christopher L. Pastore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Pastore traces how Narragansett Bay’s ecology shaped the contours of European habitation, trade, and resource use, and how littoral settlers in turn, over two centuries, transformed a marshy fractal of water and earth into a clearly defined coastline, which proved less able to absorb the blows of human initiative and natural variation.

Author : Joseph Nigg
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226925188
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Sea Monsters written by Joseph Nigg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mythic creature expert and author of Phoenix takes readers through a bestiary of sea monsters featured on the famous 16th century map Carta Marina. In the sixteenth century, sea serpents, giant man-eating lobsters, and other monsters were thought to swim the waters of Norther Europe, threatening seafarers who ventured too far from shore. Thankfully, Scandinavian mariners had Olaus Magnus, who in 1539 charted these fantastic marine animals in his influential map of the Nordic countries, the Carta Marina. In Sea Monsters, mythologist Joseph Nigg brings readers face-to-face with these creatures and other magnificent components of Magnus’s map. Nearly two meters wide in total, the map’s nine wood-block panels comprise the largest and first realistic portrayal of the region. But in addition to its important geographic significance, Magnus’s map goes beyond cartography to scenes both domestic and mystic. Close to shore, Magnus shows humans interacting with common sea life—boats struggling to stay afloat, merchants trading, children swimming, and fisherman pulling lines. But from the offshore deeps rise some of the most terrifying sea creatures imaginable—like sea swine, whales as large as islands, and the Kraken. In this book, Nigg draws on Magnus’s own text to further describe and illuminate these inventive scenes and to flesh out the stories of the monsters. Sea Monsters is a stunning tour of a world that still holds many secrets for us land dwellers, who will forever be fascinated by reports of giant squid and the real-life creatures of the deep that have proven to be as bizarre and otherworldly as we have imagined for centuries. It is a gorgeous guide for enthusiasts of maps, monsters, and the mythic. “[A] beautiful new exploration of the Carta Marina.”—Wired

Author : Carl Zimmer
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0684856239
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book At the Water's Edge written by Carl Zimmer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-09-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everybody Out of the Pond At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us. We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transformation of body shapes across millions of years. Now, drawing on the latest fossil discoveries and breakthrough scientific analysis, Carl Zimmer reveals how macroevolution works. Escorting us along the trail of discovery up to the current dramatic research in paleontology, ecology, genetics, and embryology, Zimmer shows how scientists today are unveiling the secrets of life that biologists struggled with two centuries ago. In this book, you will find a dazzling, brash literary talent and a rigorous scientific sensibility gracefully brought together. Carl Zimmer provides a comprehensive, lucid, and authoritative answer to the mystery of how nature actually made itself.

Author : Phyllis Bottome
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780810114715
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Mortal Storm written by Phyllis Bottome and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anti-fascist novel acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, The Mortal Storm was Phyllis Bottome's dramatic warning against the warmongering, antisemitic and misogyny of the Nazis. Highlighting Bottome's prolific writing career and lifelong humanitarian activism, The Mortal Storm pits the developing political and feminist consciousness of Freya Roth against the Nazi machine that will destroy the fabric of her family and nation.

Author : H. M. Tomlinson
Publisher : Courier Dover Publications
ISBN 13 : 048680397X
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Sea and the Jungle written by H. M. Tomlinson and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Suppose you were a quiet, respectable, sedentary business or professional man, and the captain of a tramp steamer bound to South America and up the Amazon suddenly dropped into your peaceful office, invited you to go along with him, got your acceptance by a clever trick, and had you at sea before you could stop to think — wouldn't you expect to find 'something doing'?" Thus begins this classic of travel literature, in which a London journalist sets sail for Brazil and traverses 2,000 miles of wilderness. Part diary and part adventure story, H. M. Tomlinson's eloquent and hauntingly poetic account of his first ocean voyage also constitutes a report on the first successful ascent of the Amazon River and its tributary, the Madeira, by an English steamer. Originally published in 1912, Tomlinson's travelogue was hailed decades later as "one of the few level-headed works in the literature of this region" by naturalist Peter Matthiessen, who pronounced it "accurate and difficult to improve upon."

Author : Stefan Helmreich
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520942604
Total Pages : 423 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Alien Ocean written by Stefan Helmreich and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists, worlds usually out of sight and reach: the deep sea, the microscopic realm, and oceans beyond national boundaries. Working alongside scientists at sea and in labs in Monterey Bay, Hawai'i, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Sargasso Sea and at undersea volcanoes in the eastern Pacific, Stefan Helmreich charts how revolutions in genomics, bioinformatics, and remote sensing have pressed marine biologists to see the sea as animated by its smallest inhabitants: marine microbes. Thriving in astonishingly extreme conditions, such microbes have become key figures in scientific and public debates about the origin of life, climate change, biotechnology, and even the possibility of life on other worlds.

Author : Samantha Hunt
Publisher : Tin House Books
ISBN 13 : 1941040969
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Seas written by Samantha Hunt and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller "The Seas took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you’re newly falling in love with literature, newly shocked by its capacity to cast a spell..." ?Maggie Nelson (from the Introduction) A Most Anticipated Book of Summer at BuzzFeed, NYLON, and more. Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She’s often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid. True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior.The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend. With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.