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    Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
    Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
    Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
    Audiobook14 hours

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

    Written by Simon Winchester

    Narrated by Simon Winchester

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    ""Variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring…A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account."" —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

    Blending history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and exposition, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester tells the breathtaking saga of the Atlantic Ocean. A gifted storyteller and consummate historian, Winchester sets the great blue sea's epic narrative against the backdrop of mankind's intellectual evolution, telling not only the story of an ocean, but the story of civilization. Fans of Winchester's Krakatoa, The Man Who Loved China, and The Professor and the Madman will love this masterful, penetrating, and resonant tale of humanity finding its way across the ocean of history.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateNov 2, 2010
    ISBN9780062007124
    Author

    Simon Winchester

    Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.

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    Reviews for Atlantic

    3.5/5

    281 ratings37 reviews

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    • 4/5
      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 have done with much more about the flora and fauna, but that's my own prejudice.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Superb - excellent book with great historical insights about the Atlantic Ocean
    • 1/5
      I could not give it a 1/2 star. Winchester has quite a vocabulary, and a knack for fantasy. His insistence on evolution and billions of years is his great weakness. He is another advocate for the unscientific theory that everything came from nothing.
      He is utterly without excuse BECAUSE there is no possible way for life to occur “on its own” from mere matter.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      Part science, part history, this ambitious non-fiction includes almost every aspect of the Atlantic Ocean. It covers a diverse array of topics such as its origins, discovery of the gulf stream, early inventions for maritime navigation, explorations, famous shipwrecks, piracy, the slave trade, maritime battles, migration, commerce by ship and air, artistic and literary references, information dissemination, global warming, and predicted lifespan. The author includes many of his own anecdotes from his travels and time as a journalist.

      The book has its ups and downs. The amount of material covered is staggering. Certain sections are illuminating, while others are less successful. The author took a shotgun approach to relaying the material, and it was easy to get lost in the minutia. I was occasionally tempted to disengage while he cited various statistics. Listening to the audio book enhanced my enjoyment of this book that might otherwise have been a bit dull. Simon Winchester is an excellent reader with a mellifluous voice. Overall, I learned a great deal about the Atlantic and recommend the audio version to those interested in the science and history of the earth’s bodies of water.
    • 3/5
      An ambitious attempt to write a biography of the Atlantic Ocean and man’s relationship with it. Covering, cultural, geographical, and environmental concerns Winchester does a great job of weaving together personal stories, and observations of his many Atlantic related travels with sound science, and historical context. Recommended for anyone whose ever looked down out of the plane window on a trans-Atlantic flight and wondered “What’s down there?”
    • 5/5
      An excellent read. A great perspective on history, politics, etc. The author brings you into the moment and in some cases incorporates his own experiences. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      A rather idiosyncratic, rambly sort of biography of the Atlantic Ocean, combining personal anecdotes, potted biographies, short capsule histories, &c. Some very good bits, but some stretches that didn't hold my attention very well.
    • 2/5
      A heavy commercial formula with tenuously enervating connections to the Atlantic on every page, it took a very long time to get into, picked up a bit in the final quarter, then dragged on laboriously until I was happy to be finished, but only so I could scratch it off my list of part-read books. I very much enjoyed The Meaning of Everything, but I think the scholarly topic piqued my interest. I really struggled with Atlantic as it made me re-think how I select the books I read. Winchester obviously spent a great deal of effort on researching this book, and I was happy to learn more about St Helena and other parts of the world that were entirely unfamiliar, yet I am now beset by a desire to be more discerning in the books I read, and to stop and give up on a book when I know it was designed as an airport read, and would have served that purpose admirably had it stayed in the airport. I, however, brought the book home and its contents were ill-suited to this less-than-sympathetic environment.
    • 4/5
      while flying over the atlantic
    • 4/5
      Simon Winchester took on a mighty task attempting to write the biography of an ocean and does well, all things considering. Winchester starts from the start, detailing the continental drift over millions of years which led to the birth of the Atlantic (fortunately he manages to summarise these millions of years into a few pages) and which finally lead to the Atlantic disappearing.We also meet the first humans to have seen the Atlantic and onto those first European explorers looking to cross the Atlantic and onto today. All in all, another worthy tome by Mr Winchester.
    • 3/5
      slow at the start, gets better. very dense read.
    • 4/5
      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 have done with much more about the flora and fauna, but that's my own prejudice.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 2/5
      I've read most of Simon Winchester's books, and this is my least favorite. It really is a bulletin board of historical snippets, geology, ecology, and personal anecdotes, centered on the Atlantic Ocean. In the Introduction, Winchester discusses how he fretted about how to tell the tale and how he came to a "seven ages of man" organization. It didn't work for me. In most cases he's superficial, and often redundant. His description of the details of the slave trade is moving, and some of his personal experiences are interesting, but often it seemed like I was reading an almanac from cover to cover.
    • 4/5
      Themes that tie the work of Simon Winchester together seem to be "geology" "geography" and "history. They are the most frequent tags assigned to the work of the author. Atlantic. A vast ocean of a million stories is similar to some of Winchester's other work in the sense that the work is fragmented, but still forms a unity, tying together geography, geology and history. However, this book seems more voluminous than previous works, quite a whopper at just under 500 pages. The sub-title of the book Great sea battles, heroic discoveries, titanic storms, and a vast ocean of a million stories (not all editions) describes the book very well, although it seems this title was perhaps suggested by the editor rather than the author. In fact, the book as a whole radiates a sense of fatigue, and the reader may wonder whether the idea for the book came from the author or from the editor. In some markets the book is promoted as Atlantic. The Biography of an Ocean. Besides being dedicated to his wife, the book is also dedicated to Angus Campbell Macintyre, a hero, described in the book.The introduction of the book starts with a peculiar anthropomorphic approach to "the life cycle" of the ocean, which leads to the illogical conclusion that if it has a life (cycle) it might as well have its biography written. This circular type of illogical reasoning seems another attempt of the author to please the editor who probably made that suggestion. The chapter that describes the "birth" of the ocean, with its predictable echoes of other works by Winchester about the "life" or "birth" of geological phenomena, is the most mechanical and boring.However, in the other chapter, the author brings together an encyclopaedic wealth of knowledge and details about the Atlantic Ocean as the setting or background to historic events from the earliest archaelogical records to the present. Naturally, there is an enormous wealth of material to choose from, describing the travels of the Phoenicians, Vikingsto the history of the great seafaring nations. There are also chapters devoted to the weather, biology of maritime life and the effects of global warming.Another peculiar characteristic displayed by the author is the tendency to write himself into the narrative. The book does not exactly follow a historical timeline. Rather, it starts with the earliest travel experiences of the author in the early 1980s near Cadiz, which ties together the narrative from the Isles of Mogador to the Phoenicians and the Greeks and Romans passing out beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Later on in the book, attention turns to what should be a black page in British history, the Falklands War in 1982. Are these personal touches there for the author, or are they supposed to create a sense of personal experience?Still, Simon Winchester has a magnificent command of his maretial and a wonderful writing style. Given that it would be impossible to describe all of the history that accurred around the sea boards of the Atlantic Ocean, the author brings together a both recognizable and novel, original choice of historical data, with a perfect balance between overall, global developments and a myriad of detail. Both American and European history are involved, particulary from the point of view of trade, shipping, travel and communication by various means, both shipping and air travel.In sum, Simon Winchester has done it again. Atlantic. A vast ocean of a million stories is a huge, and hugely readable book, offering somethin of interest to virtually every reader, provided they enjoy reading, and can handle a book that it itself encompasses an ocean of reading material.
    • 3/5
      Stories and histories and battles and poems etc... about the Atlantic ocean - no surprise there. 3/4 of this book was great but another 1/4 was just plain boring, and I found myself either absorbed in the book or not listening at all. Overall, I'd say worth a read but expect some very slow parts.
    • 3/5
      Gets quite depressing towards the end, as he recounts one Atlantic ecosystem disaster after another, including the collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery.
    • 4/5
      I can't not love Simon Winchester's writing, but this is my least favorite of his books. I love them all, but this one seemed weakest in the narrative thread that pulls the disparate elements of his other works together so neatly.
    • 4/5
      Good read, well structured; a little showy but fascinating nonetheless.
    • 3/5
      Some interesting stories in here - quite a few were familiar, but just as many weren't and I put the book down feeling that I'd increased my general knowledge about the Atlantic quite a bit. Some aspects of the book made me a little uncomfortable: the very Euro-centric (Anglo-centric) point of view, for example which is understandable given that the writer is a Brit, but made me feel that the inhabitants of other continents around the ocean had been short-changed. A good example of this is in the case of the book's dedication to a Scot who died in the Dunedin Star rescue alongside a Namibian man, Mathias Khoraseb, who only seems to get mentioned in passing. I also found the personal anecdotes tedious at times, although some of them were interesting. And I don't think the use of Shakespeare's ages of man was I was reading the ebook version of this and the editing was a bit off in places - wrong words sometimes and a puzzling use of 'her' to refer to George II at one point!Overall, an interesting read, but with a background level of irritation which stops it being a really good one.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 5/5
      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 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 changeIn 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.
    • 4/5
      As much as this is a book abount all things Atlantic, it is also a tribute to men who for centuries battled the unknown, the elements, time, and each other on and below this body of water. Like many, I have ties to this ocean. I was born in Virginia (on the coast), grew up in the Caribbean, sailed sailboats and worked as a deck officer on freighters and tankers. This book transported me to all the nooks and crannies and back in time to when some amazing brave souls first attempted to leave the comfortable sight of land and cross the Atlantic. I really liked this book.
    • 2/5
      Simon Winchester can write compelling and entertaining prose and I've enjoyed several of his books. This one, though is flawed by his blatant and dishonest bias against Christianity. One example of this is his treatment of John Newton. Winchester implies that Newton was a clergyman, hymn writer and slaver all at the same time and he never misses an opportunity to sneer at him. While it's true that Newton was a slaver and continued in the trade for a few years after his conversion, he did leave the trade and eventually became a preacher. Later, he supported Wilberforce in his campaign to abolish the slave trade. Quite a difference, but evidently there is no place for reform in Winchester 's world. I enjoy a good story, but prefer that it's honest. This and other examples of bias cause me to doubt the veracity and worth of the rest of the book.
    • 4/5
      This is an excellent history of the Atlantic by Winchester. The way he tells the story is not necessarily in date order but rather from using bits and pieces of a poem from Jacques describing the stages of life itself.What follows is not a linear narrative but one replete with historical triumphs and tragedies, heroism and mundane existence and Winchester's personal anecdotes all residing near or within the waters of this great ocean.Though it ends on a rather pessimistic note about the environmental fate of the Atlantic in recent years, there is something eternal in the fact that this immense body of water ever existed at all and, as with every living thing, will cease to exist again.
    • 2/5
      The book is well written. The author used an analogy between stages of life and the stages of life for the Atlantic ocean. At times it is a bit boring but I like the latter emphasis on pollution, global warming, and eventual change of continents (tectonic movement). The history of conflict, slaving, and exploration was also interesting.
    • 3/5
      The concept of this book about the English lake sounds much better than the finished product. Man is a land-based animal, so Winchester ends up writing about the places that border on the Atlantic rather than the ocean itself. He also restricts himself to the English-speaking parts. Africa and Latin America have to take a backseat to the Falkland Islands. Some stories are better told elsewhere, some actually botched by Winchester. The battle of Trafalgar happened after a desperate chase across the Atlantic and back, all of it omitted by Winchester.Winchester shows the growth of connections (ships, cables, planes) between Europe and America but neglects to mention that the Atlantic acts as a huge barrier. Trade within America and within Europe is massively larger than the trade between those regions. The biology of the Atlantic is also not given sufficient space. What are the highlights and specialties of that ocean? Compared to the more intimate portraits of the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic described by Winchester remains an amorphous and indistinct beast.Overall, a very weak effort. Winchester is coasting off into the sunset.
    • 4/5
      Good read on a subject little thought about.