The Perilous Catch

For centuries Britain's commercial fishermen have ventured out into the ravages of the surrounding seas to bring fish back both to supply a home market and for export around the world. Fishing is one of history's most dangerous jobs, and when disasters occur they can affect whole communities: in 1872 some 129 men were lost in one night alone. Fishermen have lost their lives because of extreme weather, fishing gear entanglement, lack of emergency support and often simply by falling overboard. Today, commercial fishing remains one of the most perilous occupations and still claims the lives of fishermen each year, leaving their families behind. The Perilous Catch is a well-researched, comprehensive and poignant history of the fishing industry written by maritime historian Mike Smylie.

Gary Williams was a retired doctor, twice divorced, angry and embittered, with fewer days ahead than behind. With no children, and much of his life’s work taken away, Gary finds solace in hunting and fishing. He resigns himself to ever-increasing discontent, followed by death. But when the moment comes and the darkness wraps around him, instead of dying he revives in another world. Gary finds himself renewed and invigorated, but alone in a strange world full of unknown wild animals, a multitude of alien races, and hostile natives who are technologically stagnate. Gary must use all his skills and wits to learn the rules of the new world, and carve out a place for himself in it.

Luke and his friend Alex are looking forward to a day out fishing, but they catch something completely unexpected.

The author fought with the 6th Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders during the campaigns of 1st Army in Tunisia and in Italy thereafter. As a young platoon commander he and his men were in the thick of the fighting. Wounded during the desperate action at Anzio, he wrote notes of all that had happened in exact detail and the result is a memoir both fresh and authentic. This is one of the most gripping memoirs we have published, on a par with Geoffrey Powell's Men At Arnhem The author also describes the actions of other regiments, particularly the Guards Brigade at Anzio, and US units, alongside whom he fought. In the closing stages of the book he shares his post-conflict experiences and convalescence with the reader in a moving way.

Although a host of adventurers stormed west in 1806 after Lewis and Clark's safe return, seven of them left unique legacies because of their monumental journeys, their lionhearted spirit in the face of hardship, and the way their paths intertwined time and again. The Perilous West tells this riveting story in depth for the first time, focusing on each of the seven explorers in turn - Ramsay Crooks, Robert McClellan, John Hoback, Jacob Reznor, Edward Robinson, Pierre Dorion, and Marie Dorion. These seven counted the Tetons, Hells Canyon, and South Pass among their discoveries. More importantly, they forged the Oregon Trail-a path destined to link the Atlantic coast with the Pacific, spurring national expansion as it carried trappers, soldiers, pioneers, missionaries, and gold-seekers westward. The Perilous West begins in 1806, when Crooks and McClellan meet Lewis and Clark, and the vast expanse from the Dakotas to the Pacific coast appears a commercial paradise. The story ends in 1814, when a band of French Canadian trappers rescue Marie Dorion, and even John Jacob Astor's well-financed enterprise has ended in violence and chaos, placing the protagonists squarely in the context of Thomas Jefferson's monumental opening of the West, which stalled with the War of 1812.

In the spring of 2007, National Geographic warned, "The oceans are in deep blue trouble. From the northernmost reaches of the Greenland Sea to the swirl of the Antarctic Circle, we are gutting our seas of fish." There were legitimate grounds for concern. After increasing more than fourfold between 1950 and 1994, the global wild fish catch reached a plateau and stagnated despite exponential growth in the fishing industry. As numerous scientific reports showed, many fish stocks around the world collapsed, creating a genuine global overfishing crisis. Making Seafood Sustainable analyzes the ramifications of overfishing for the United States by investigating how fishers, seafood processors, retailers, government officials, and others have worked together to respond to the crisis. Historian Mansel G. Blackford examines how these players took steps to make fishing in some American waters, especially in Alaskan waters, sustainable. Critical to these efforts, Blackford argues, has been government and industry collaboration in formulating and enforcing regulations. What can be learned from these successful experiences? Are they applicable elsewhere? What are the drawbacks? Making Seafood Sustainable addresses these questions and suggests that sustainable seafood management can be made to work. The economic and social costs incurred in achieving sustainable resource usage are significant, but there are ways to mitigate them. More broadly, this study illustrates ways to manage commonly held natural resources around the world—land, water, oil, and so on—in sustainable ways.

For generations, coastal fishermen, working at the very fringe between land and sea, have fished salmon and herring using methods passed down from father to son. Some of these ancient traditions have been traced back as far as the days when the men from Scandinavia colonised these lands in the eighth and ninth centuries; others are simply nineteenth century in origin. Sadly, in recent years stocks have dwindled and regulations limit local fishing practices. Today, some surviving methods, such as haaf-netting, are in danger of dying out, whilst other traditional fisheries now lie abandoned. Though herring stocks have recovered from their late twentieth-century decline, the Atlantic salmon is now under immense threat and more danger of extinction than ever before. Tracing and describing his own journey from North Devon, through Wales and up to the top of Scotland, along with interviews with many fishermen, both retired and working, Mike Smylie explores the social history of these indigenous fishing traditions and communities, presenting a picture of their lives, past, present and future.

Gross explores our complex fascination with uncanny children in works of fiction. Ranging from Victorian to modern works—Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Franz Kafka’s “The Cares of a Family Man,” Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—Kenneth Gross’s book delves into stories that center around the figure of a strange and dangerous child. Whether written for adults or child readers, or both at once, these stories all show us odd, even frightening visions of innocence. We see these children’s uncanny powers of speech, knowledge, and play, as well as their nonsense and violence. And, in the tales, these child-lives keep changing shape. These are children who are often endangered as much as dangerous, haunted as well as haunting. They speak for lost and unknown childhoods. In looking at these narratives, Gross traces the reader’s thrill of companionship with these unpredictable, often solitary creatures—children curious about the adult world, who while not accommodating its rules, fall into ever more troubling conversations with adult fears and desires. This book asks how such imaginary children, objects of wonder, challenge our ways of seeing the world, our measures of innocence and experience, and our understanding of time and memory.