Atlantic

In a blend of history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and explanation, Simon Winchester tells the entire saga of this great sea from its birth and through the mature times when mankinds story accompanies it. At first mankind merely dabbled with the Atlantics waters and never dared to venture into it or even imagined crossing it. But starting perhaps as long as a thousand years ago, and once the first mariners managed to cross it - be they the Vikings, the Irish, the Chinese, Christopher Columbus in the north, or to the south the Portuguese and the Spanish - it evolved in the worlds growing consciousness of itself as an enclosed body of water, an ocean that was bounded by the Americas on the West, and by Europe and Africa on the East. ATLANTIC is a biography of this immense space, of a sea which has defined and determined so much about the lives of the millions who live beside it, or close to its tens of thousands of miles of coast. The Atlantic has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists and warriors; much of our weather is made there; huge quantities of our food comes from there; it affects our very appearance and/or character, our attitudes and our dreams. From poets to potentates, seers to sailors, fishermen to foresters, all have a relationship with this great body of blue-green sea, and regard her as friend or foe, adversary or ally, depending on circumstance or fortune. Simon Winchester chronicles that relationship, and by doing so makes the Atlantic come vividly alive.