Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics

"While much of the telling of human history focuses on events that occurred on land, THE OCEAN READER takes the centrality of water as its starting point, bringing together material that has shaped humans' relationship to the water and treating the oceanas a dynamic site of history, culture, and politics. In its twelve parts, THE OCEAN READER gathers a variety of primary texts, including myth, scholarly writing, poetry, scientific research, song lyrics, memoir, journalism, blog posts, and more"--
Collecting texts from all corners of the world that span antiquity to the present, The Ocean Reader charts humans' relationship to the ocean, treating it as a dynamic site of history, culture, and politics.
From prehistoric times to the present, the Ocean has been used as a highway for trade, a source of food and resources, and a space for recreation and military conquest, as well as an inspiration for religion, culture, and the arts. The Ocean Reader charts humans' relationship to the Ocean, which has often been seen as a changeless space without a history. It collects familiar, forgotten, and previously unpublished texts from all corners of the world. Spanning antiquity to the present, the volume's selections cover myriad topics including the slave trade, explorers from China and the Middle East, shipwrecks and castaways, Caribbean and Somali pirates, battles and U-boats, narratives of the Ocean's origins, and the devastating effects of climate change. Containing gems of maritime writing ranging from myth, memoir, poetry, and scientific research to journalism, song lyrics, and scholarly writing, The Ocean Reader is the essential guide for all those wanting to understand the complex and long history of the Ocean that covers over 70 percent of the planet.