W. Jeffrey Bolster

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 this account of this interdependency, the author, 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,...

From the Publisher: An Enlightening, Expanded View Of American Maritime History. From Native Americans with birch bark canoes and inventive colonists who took fishing shallops and laid decks over them for coastal trading to the rise of the automated mass carrier and ever-bigger passenger cruise ships, this book tells the story of four hundred years of America's maritime history. It is filled with powerful and evocative images of ships such as the...