America And The Sea

Spanning the centuries from maritime activities before Columbus to the nation's maritime involvement today, this rich, complex archive provides a new history of the United States from the fundamental perspective of the sea that surrounds it, and the rivers and lakes that link its vast interior to the seacoast. 350 photos, 55 in color. 10 maps.

America is the first world power to inhabit an immense land mass open at both ends to the world’s two largest oceans—the Atlantic and the Pacific. This gives America a great competitive advantage often overlooked by Atlanticists, whose focus remains overwhelmingly fixed on America’s relationship with Europe. Bruce Cumings challenges the Atlanticist perspective in this innovative new history, arguing that relations with Asia influenced our history greatly. Cumings chronicles how the movement westward, from the Middle West to the Pacific, has shaped America’s industrial, technological, military, and global rise to power. He unites domestic and international history, international relations, and political economy to demonstrate how technological change and sharp economic growth have created a truly bicoastal national economy that has led the world for more than a century. Cumings emphasizes the importance of American encounters with Mexico, the Philippines, and the nations of East Asia. The result is a wonderfully integrative history that advances a strong argument for a dual approach to American history incorporating both Atlanticist and Pacificist perspectives.

The Free Sea offers a unique, single-volume analysis of incidents in American history that affected U.S. freedom of navigation at sea. The book spans more than 200 years, beginning in the Colonial era with the Quasi-War with France in 1798 and extending to contemporary Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea. Through wars and numerous crises with North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Russia and China, freedom of navigation has been a persistent challenge for the United States, a nation reliant on open seas for economic prosperity, military security and global order. This volume focuses on the struggle to retain freedom of the seas. Challenges to U.S. warships and maritime commerce have pushed, and continue to challenge, the United States to vindicate its rights through diplomatic, legal, and military means, underscoring the need for the strategic resolve in the global maritime commons.

The coastal people of what will be California, Arizona and New Mexico are struggling with the changing world around them. As the mammoths disappear, the seer Sunchaser must decide whether to shelter a beautiful stranger and risk angering the Spirits further.

Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History Winner of the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction A National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 One of the Washington Post's Best Books of the Year In this “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (New York Times), “Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea” (front page, New York Times Book Review). Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea’ ” (Wall Street Journal). Illuminating America’s political and economic relationship with the environment from the age of the conquistadors to the present, Davis demonstrates how the Gulf’s fruitful ecosystems and exceptional beauty empowered a growing nation. Filled with vivid, untold stories from the sportfish that launched Gulfside vacationing to Hollywood’s role in the country’s first offshore oil wells, this “vast and welltold story shows how we made the Gulf . . . [into] a ‘national sacrifice zone’ ” (Bill McKibben). The first and only study of its kind, The Gulf offers “a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written” (Edward O. Wilson).

The gold standard in college-level American naval history texts, edited by the foremost scholar in the field In the newly revised second edition of America, Sea Power and the World, a team of distinguished researchers delivers an extensive and authoritative survey of American naval history, the place of the United States in world affairs, and the role of that country’s naval forces during peacetime and wartime. Each chapter contains a comprehensive analysis of its subject as well as brief sidebars describing a key weapon or technological development of the era and a short biographical sketch of an influential leader or representative of the navy from that era. The book offers extensive illustration and maps and a throughgoing emphasis on naval policy, strategy, roles, and missions, with careful attention paid to naval operations. These factors given greater focus than the descriptions of battle tactics found in other texts. Readers will also find: A thorough introduction to sea power and the modern state system, as well as the American War for Independence at sea Comprehensive explorations of the genesis of the United States Navy from 1785 to 1806 Practical discussions of the Naval War of 1812 and the Confirmation of Independence from 1807 to 1815 and the Squadron Navy as an agent of the commercial empire until 1890 Fulsome treatments of the Second World War in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Pacific, including defensive actions in the Pacific from 1937 to 1943 and offensive actions from 1943 to 1944. New chapters exclusive to the 2nd edition focused on the history of African Americans and women in the US Navy, the development of joint operations and unified command, and the naval history of the last two decades. Perfect for undergraduate students taking courses on the naval history of the United States, America, Sea Power and the World, Second Edition will also earn a place in the libraries of members of the general public interested in naval and military history.

Pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson explores the wonders of the Earth's oceans in these classics of American science and nature writing. Rachel Carson is perhaps most famous as the author of Silent Spring, but she was first and foremost a "poet of the sea" and the three books collected in this deluxe Library of America volume are classics of American science and nature writing. Under the Sea-Wind (1941), Carson's lyrical debut, offers an intimate account of maritime ecology through the eyes of three of the ocean's denizens, the individual lives of sanderling, mackerel, and eel dramatically intertwined in the enduring ebb and flow of the tides. The Sea Around Us (1951)--a winner of the National Book Award--draws on a wealth of oceanographic, meteorological, biological, and historical research to present its subject on a grand, biospheric scale, revealing not only many mysteries of the still-unfathomed depths, but a reverence for the sea as a source of global climate and of life itself. Concluding Carson's "sea trilogy," The Edge of the Sea (1955) explores the habits of the many small creatures that live on shorelines and in tidepools accessible to any beachcomber: part identification guide, part hymn to ecological complexity, it is a book that conveys the "sense of wonder" in nature for which Carson is justly celebrated. At a moment when overfishing, pollution, and global warming are causing catastrophic changes to marine environments worldwide, Carson's lyrically detailed accounts of these environments offer a timely reminder of their beauty, fragility, and immense consequence for human life.

Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged. The answers lay in their sacred stories. Author María García Esperón, illustrator Amanda Mijangos, and translator David Bowles have gifted us a treasure. Their talents have woven this collection of stories from nations and cultures across our two continents—the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it—from the edge of Argentina all the way up to Alaska. The Em Querido list seeks to introduce the finest books in translation from around the world to an American audience. We feel lucky to be bringing you this book on our inaugural list, which we hope will be a true window and mirror