Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories (P.S.) [ペーパーバック]

Simon Winchester's Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories is an arm chair explorers dream and yet another installment in a growing list of terrific books. Filled to brimming with stories of exploration and heroic figures, Winchester sees the Atlantic Ocean as the well spring from which all (or the major part) of European history and greatness finds its roots. Atlantic is as much a biography of the Atlantic Ocean as any other biography and a detailed examination of how some of mankind has interacted with that ocean and been affected by it.

Not wanting to omit anything, Winchester begins the story with an investigation into the formation of the Atlantic basic 370 million years ago and rapidly advances to relatively modern times. Vikings, Norsemen, Portuguese, Dutchmen, the French, English, all have their place in Winchester's book. The title includes the phrase "Million Stories" and surely this is true. As I was reading Atlantic, I was often mindful of the fact that the stories included in the book aren't all of the stories; that there are more forgotten tales than there are remembered tales. That realization is numbing when you think about it.

Still, Winchester has managed to pull together a gripping read. If you're a lover of adventure and history you'll want to spend some time with Atlantic.

Simon Winchester's previous works include three terrific books among other writings. The Professor and the Madman (1998), The Map that Changed the World (2001), and The Crack at the Edge of the World (2005) are all extremely readable and highly interesting. Atlantic is certainly equally interesting.

I highly recommend Atlantic by Simon Winchester.

Peace always.

I have enjoyed a number of Winchester's books, but this was not one of them. He is at his best when he is detailing a story that is not well-known and surprising. That was what drove the success of his previous work. In this book, he takes on an enormous subject and ends up with a catalog of his research interspersed with totally unsupported assertions and some rather dull writing about his travels.

The structural problem with the book is that Winchester has chosen a cumbersome thematic structure to organize his writing: the seven stages of man listed in the "All the world's a stage..." speech from As You Like It. While this may have seemed like a clever way to tackle a sprawling subject like the Atlantic, the structure overwhelms any insight Winchester may or may not have had about the Atlantic. Seeking to fill this outline, Winchester stuffs everything into it that either (a) features the words "sea" or "Atlantic" or (b) happens to have taken place in or near the Atlantic. The result is a combination of the obvious (jet travel ended regular ocean liner service) or the downright tautological (in a section on "cities," Winchester writes brief descriptions of New York, Cape Town, St. Helena, none of which have any connection to each other and all of which essentially boil down to the pointless statement 'these are Atlantic cities because they are on the Atlantic ocean.")

Unsupported assertions abound. Apparently, musical instruments were not powerful enough before the 18th century to tackle the sea as a subject (whatever that may mean in the context of music). The "paramount" issue in the story of the Pilgrims is the Atlantic. What? How do you back that up? Even more bizarre, Winchester then undermines his own point by noting that it was important only as an obstacle to be crossed. Well, yeah. The Pilgrims are remembered for the founding of New England, not for their (total lack of ) seamanship or connection to the Atlantic.

Aside from the structural problems, Winchester's prose is often leaden and tedious. The opening story about his transatlantic crossing drags on for too long, pulls in totally unrelated issues like the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt that resulted in the Atlantic Charter, and then peters out with no apparent point. As other reviewers have noted, almost everything is weighed down with vague modifiers. I suspect that these pleading modifiers are Winchester's unconscious attempt to make his lack of insight or, frankly, point sound "important."

Put simply, the book is a mess. The interesting subjects are covered in other books in better detail and with better writing. Winchester's writing about himself is dull and overwrought. Readers are better off sticking to books where Winchester has tackled a small, somewhat esoteric subject.

Atlantic is not easily described. Atlantic is a gently rolling hybrid of a travelogue, life journey story, geological epochs, and human history rolled up in a manner to grab the attention of the curious mind seeking the really `big picture' of half a billion years. Hundreds of books have been written to address the particulars of Atlantic's topics. From this legacy of writings and observations, Winchester derives a kind of "organic" Atlantic to describe with mans 'brief' encounter. Winchester pulls the many layers of man's history and experience together in just the right format of snip-it's in context to permit the reader to witness an Ocean that might otherwise be `missed' as a 400 million year old `life form'.

This is not a technical read. It is an enjoyable, personal armchair reflection of man's geo-socio-rhetorical relationship with the Atlantic. It might be best enjoyed on your next transatlantic flight or on beach vacation or, if you're really lucky, a ship crossing looking out over the seas horizon ahead and behind. Sans the pain of an Atlantic flight, it is a poetic writing for all that have stared out across the pond and wondered. You are guaranteed to become the resident savant of Atlantic trivia at your next dinner party. The reader can relate to the author's penchant and his coming to terms with a life lived around the often unnoticed Atlantic's defining nature for Western civilization. The core story is the "Atlantic" ... man is the context around the story.

Update:

Simon Winchester has removed himself from the domain of legitimate historian with his obituary of Kim Jong Il ...

"The State's founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone ...North Korea's attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out -- its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing."

Winchester's Kim Il Sung apologetic obit is a 'bad thing' ... an incredibly bad thing that is antithetical to `civilization'. An historian that opines the passing of a "quaint, though well-intentioned" 21st century prison state tyrant is unhinged. I'll not change my review on `Atlantic' as what's written is written. Simon Winchester grieving over Kim Jong Il banishes him from legitimate historian in my range of acceptable writers. Perspective readers have a right to know where the historical author's mind resides.