Atlantic Ocean: The Illustrated History of the Ocean That Changed the World » (Bargain)

A “significant historic and literary achievement”: that’s what the Associated Press called Martin W. Sandler’s enthralling Resolute. Now, Sandler returns to the high seas, this time for an in-depth look at the Atlantic, those who sailed across it, and the world-shifting transformations wrought by those explorers and travelers.
Since 300 B.C.E., the Atlantic has served as the corridor for fundamental exchanges of peoples and technologies, a pathway for the transfer of ideas and cultures that defined and challenged communities across wide spans of time and space. This, the first illustrated and comprehensive history of the Atlantic World, is at the forefront of an exciting new wave of study in universities and think tanks. Atlantic History is an increasingly dynamic field of scholarship based on the notion that the Americas, Africa, and Europe have composed a regional system from the late 15th century to the present.
Sandler explores the historical, socioeconomic, political, scientific, and cultural developments that occurred throughout this important region and that shaped the modern world to this very day. They include everything from exploration and discovery, the dissemination of ideas, and the growth of global commerce, and the fall of imperialism.
Lavishly illustrated with exquisite antique maps, period paintings and engravings, documents, political cartoons, and photographs, this unique volume is an engaging read sure to appeal to audiences everywhere.

Publishers Weekly

This history of the Atlantic world is packed with paintings, maps both ancient and modern, and photographs. Prolific historian and Emmy-winning TV writer Sandler points out that scholars have only recently focused on the Americas, Europe and Africa together as a thriving regional system connected by the great ocean. The book begins in the ancient world, when sailors ventured surprisingly far out into the Atlantic with no navigational instruments. The narrative pace picks up after Columbus's voyages, with beautiful maps and images of the early explorations. As history, there is little new in the chapters on the American, French and Industrial revolutions and the world wars, but the book shines in depicting the ships that traveled the ocean, their technical progress and voyages, the massive movement of immigrants and slaves, and today's continuing exploration of the Atlantic. While the writing is a cut above that of the usual coffee-table book, it's the illustrations that really stand out, so readers will have a thoroughly satisfying time just poring over the 480 color illustrations and their extensive captions. (Dec.)

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