Who is popular today?

This epic history of man’s relationship with the oceans – from pirates to the slave trade – is one of the books of the year
“I have not attempted to write what pretends to be a complete or comprehensive history of the oceans,” David Abulafia states in the preface to The Boundless Sea. As the book is over a thousand pages long, and is subtitled A Human History of the Oceans, the uninitiated reader, perhaps already wary at the prospect of the voyage to come, might wonder what a more comprehensive study could entail. Yet Abulafia steers us through the most surprising of waters.
He has ventured into this territory before, in his award-winning 2011 history of the Mediterranean, The Great Sea. That book was thrillingly alive with stories of how Europe and Africa evolved through their seafaring history, but his new title is an even grander adventure, beginning with the Pacific Ocean in 176,000BC and coming (almost) to the present day. If it has a central theme, it is the way mankind has wrestled with the oceanic vastness to travel, trade and survive, and that our ends have been both noble and wicked. Clearly, Abulafia is fascinated by the endless, ever-shifting water, and cites an Aboriginal saying to the effect that “the sea is alive, like a person. So you must respect it.” Continue reading...