Atlantic - 9780061702587

From Simon Winchester, the author of the bestsellers Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"---Time) and The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"---New York Time Book Review), comes the immense and thrilling story of the world's most mysterious and breathtaking natural wonder, the axis of western civilization: the Atlantic Ocean.

Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Poets and potentates, seers and sailors, fishermen and foresters---all have had a realtionship with this great body of gray and heaving sea and regarded her as friend or foe, bridge or barrier, depending on circumstance and fortune. Winchester chronicles that relationship, making the Atlantic come vividly alive. Spanning the ocean's story from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, his narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.

Until a thousand years ago, few humans ventured into the Atlantic or imagined traversing its seemingly limitless expanse. But once the first daring mariners successfully navigated to its far shores---whether they were Vikings, the Irish, the Basques, John Cabot, or Christopher Columbus in the north, or the Portuguese and the Spanish in the south---humankind's view of the world swiftly evolved to encompass this vast body of water, bounded by the Americas to the west and by Europe and Africa to the east. Much as the Mediterranean had been the center of classical civilization, Winchester argues, the Atlantic became the axis of Western civilization, upon which the power and influence of the modern world have been defined and determined.

Atlantic is the summation of Winchester's years of research and travel---from the rocky outcrops of the Faroes to the effervescent ports of Argentina and Brazil to the slave castles of West Africa and the seaside villages of Ireland. More than a mere history, this is an unforgettable journey of unprecedented scope by one of the most gifted writers in the English language.