From the Publisher
*One of The Economist's Best Books of 2024 So Far!*
“An imaginative and engrossing trip through three millennia, and a book that fully lives up to its bold title.” -Wall Street Journal
"Vivid...This approach to the past suits the present perfectly." -The Economist
"Entertaining and knowledgeable... A well-informed and dynamic narrator, Gibbins glides breezily between stories of his scuba dives and quotes from medieval Chinese poetry. History buffs will find this smooth sailing." -Publishers Weekly
“Enlightening…Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.” – Kirkus Reviews
"Gibbins’ remarkable research will grant both maritime and general historians a deeper perspective on how our world developed." – Booklist
"A well-informed and dynamic narrator, Gibbins glides breezily between stories of his scuba dives and quotes from medieval Chinese poetry. History buffs will find this smooth sailing." – Publishers Weekly
"A real-life Indiana Jones takes readers on a dive through these underwater museums, revealing the sunken secrets of the past... Prepare to be flabbergasted by the treasures Gibbins uncovers and by the stories they represent." –The Times (UK)
"Fascinating… [Gibbins] offers wonderful material, well researched and placed in its wider context, illuminating the history of trade and warfare from unaccustomed angles." –David Abulafia, Spectator
"Captivating." –Unseen Histories
"Excellent, endlessly interesting...richly detailed, often spellbinding narratives... mesmerizing...beautifully written." –The Irish Independent
"[Gibbins] gives a history of the world in a sea-salted way that has never been done before. A bravura work, insightfully woven, grippingly told and beautifully illustrated." -Mensun Bound, bestselling author of The Ship Beneath the Ice
“This book will be treasured by all who are hooked on the mystique of loss, the romance of discovery and the sense that shipwrecks give of having captured a moment in time." -Sir Tim Smit, co-founder, the Eden Project
“David Gibbins’ deep dive into maritime archaeology is masterful and entrancing - this is big history at its best. Absolutely fascinating, beautifully written and impeccably researched.” -Professor Alice Roberts, TV broadcaster and bestselling author of Ancestors
Library Journal
06/14/2024
Gibbins (Atlantis Legacy) presents stories about 12 shipwrecks, drawn from his 40 years of experience in maritime archaeology. Light on specifics about archaeological methods, this book is not for specialists. Instead, he uses the shipwrecks as touchstones to weave portraits of the political and economic contexts under which the ships sailed. With each chapter featuring a singular ship, the book journeys from the Bronze Age to World War II; it meanders through ancient Egypt, classical Greece, early Byzantium, Tang China, 11th-century Vikings, Europe in the Middle Ages, and the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. Readers are shown much more than naval history: there are also artifacts and details about maritime architecture that successfully depict the world of each ship's crew and passengers. Written in accessible language found in Gibbins' best-selling novels, the book's chapters are rich in historical aspects and will appeal to a mass audience. VERDICT Gibbins's intimate knowledge of underwater archaeology and his appealing writing style make this book attractive to fans of popular history and narratives with maritime themes. Give to readers who enjoyed David Grann's The Wager.—Caitlin O'Leary
AUGUST 2024 - AudioFile
David Gibbins's essays on historic shipwrecks, some of which he has seen firsthand as a diver, branch out into a lot of detail about what was found when exploring them and what was going on around the times of the wrecks. Kent Klineman pauses a lot as he narrates, sounding cautious about getting names and details right. It's rough listening at first, but Klineman's staccato delivery works better as the audiobook goes on. Gibbins's essay on the HMS TERROR, whose crew famously resorted to cannibalism while on an Arctic exploration, turns out to be the most fascinating and stirring. Gibbins emphasizes historical events over his own experiences, but he mentions a few personal connections to the wrecks he's considering. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-11-28
A popular novelist turns his hand to historical writing, focusing on what shipwrecks can tell us.
There’s something inherently romantic about shipwrecks: the mystery, the drama of disaster, the prospect of lost treasure. Gibbins, who’s found acclaim as an author of historical fiction, has long been fascinated with them, and his expertise in both archaeology and diving provides a tone of solid authority to his latest book. The author has personally dived on more than half the wrecks discussed in the book; for the other cases, he draws on historical records and accounts. “Wrecks offer special access to history at all…levels,” he writes. “Unlike many archaeological sites, a wreck represents a single event in which most of the objects were in use at that time and can often be closely dated. What might seem hazy in other evidence can be sharply defined, pointing the way to fresh insights.” Gibbins covers a wide variety of cases, including wrecks dating from classical times; a ship torpedoed during World War II; a Viking longship; a ship of Arab origin that foundered in Indonesian waters in the ninth century; the Mary Rose, the flagship of the navy of Henry VIII; and an Arctic exploring vessel, the Terror (for more on that ship, read Paul Watson’s Ice Ghost). Underwater excavation often produces valuable artifacts, but Gibbins is equally interested in the material that reveals the society of the time. He does an excellent job of placing each wreck within a broader context, as well as examining the human elements of the story. The result is a book that will appeal to readers with an interest in maritime history and who would enjoy a different, and enlightening, perspective.
Gibbins combines historical knowledge with a sense of adventure, making this book a highly enjoyable package.
