War in Iran
The headlines are built on long histories and debates.
Posted on in Hot Topic
The Ocean
Who doesn't love a good beach read?
Posted on July 17, 2025 in Hot Topic
Armstrong, Chris. Blue new deal: why we need a new politics for the ocean. Yale, 2022. 272p bibl index ISBN 9780300259742, $30.00; ISBN 9780300270402 pbk, $18.00; ISBN 9780300264999 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2023
Climate change is real, and the planet is in crisis. In response, many politicians and activists are pushing for a Green New Deal, concentrating on land-based sustainable energy and reduced carbon emissions. Unfortunately, this focus ignores something that might be even more critical: the oceans. Forgetting about the importance of oceans is easy because the majority of people live away from them; yet life began there, and water covers seven-tenths of the planet. Even worse is forgetting that oceans serve in a number of critical roles, ranging from moderating the temperature of Earth and pushing weather patterns to providing the means of existence for many people. Armstrong (Univ. of Southampton, UK) does a wonderful job in this volume of discussing the importance of oceans to people’s lives and their inherent connection to them. This alone makes the book a valuable read. What really sets it apart is that it also gets into ocean politics and provides tangible policy changes that could help preserve this precious resource for the future. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates, faculty, professionals, and general readers. —J. S. Ashley, Eastern Illinois University
Cunliffe, Barry W. On the ocean: the Mediterranean and the Atlantic from prehistory to AD 1500. Oxford, 2017. 631p index ISBN 9780198757894, $39.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE May 2018
This is a stunning work, handsome and massive, its author a distinguished and prolific archaeologist. The maps offer a “sea-wise view of the world,” and their unconventional projections bring readers more deeply into the narrative, which is enhanced by numerous color photographs. Scholarly research has rarely been so richly and attractively presented. The book’s originality lies in the depth of its chronological scope, especially its reach back to the prehistoric, about which, thanks to nautical archaeology, scholars are learning more and more. Cunliffe (emer., archaeology, Oxford) contrasts the human experience of “the contained Mediterranean with the endless Atlantic” with the western European peninsula thrust between the two. The book is highly specific but also offers general observations on humanity’s relationship to the sea. Cunliffe points out that the sea has stimulated the imagination, serving both as inspiration and deterrent, predatory and uncertain, yet with a magnetism drawing people to what it offers. The heft of the book and its huge array of facts may discourage casual readers, but those with a serious interest in the subject will find this splendid, challenging book immensely rewarding. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. —J. C. Perry, Tufts University
Gerhardt, Christina. Sea change: an atlas of islands in a rising ocean. California, 2023. 320p bibl index ISBN 9780520304826, $34.95; ISBN 9780520973213 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE July 2024
With a foreword by Bill McKibben, this artistically crafted book combines local and regional maps, expository texts, and poetry for 48 islands (sensu lato) and archipelagoes. The selection is not, as might be assumed, mainly devoted to island nations that are existentially endangered by sea level rise. It does include many in this category, like Mauritius, the Maldives, Marianas, Kiribati, and Palau. It also includes the two largest islands, Greenland and New Guinea, and eclectic selections, like Singapore, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Solomon Islands. Each island’s treatment includes its name in its native language, languages spoken, a historical timeline, area, elevation, and population. Essays accompanying each island/archipelago are especially well informed historically, offering interesting vignettes and diverse information of general interest. An example is that the warm waters of the South Pacific are particularly prone to cyclones, storms with circular patterns, high winds, and torrential rains. Another example is that Fiji is among the first nations with a national plan to move populations from the coasts to higher areas. Some islands feature descriptive illustrations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals, but especially general readers. —F. T. Manheim, George Mason University
Indian Ocean slavery in the age of abolition, ed. by Robert Harms, Bernard K. Freamon, and David W. Blight. Yale, 2013. 253p ISBN 9780300163872 pbk, $30.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE April 2014
The British Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in March 1807 set the path toward the gradual abolition of slavery itself in the transatlantic world. Meanwhile, on the other side of Africa, both the slave trade and slavery expanded in the Indian Ocean region, helped along by many factors, including a boom in British purchases of cloves and ivory. The vast western “Indian Ocean World,” stretching from the coast of East Africa to the South China Sea, long had been a competing commercial imperial system with the transatlantic trade, but it took on a particularly important character in the age of abolition. The dhow, a traditional Arab ocean-sailing vessel, carried the cargo along routes heavily favored by monsoon winds, pushing ships from East Africa across the ocean and back in remarkably short times. This volume of essays considers this world from economic, social, legal, and religious angles, noting both its resemblance to and difference from the better-known transatlantic world of slavery. This indispensable volume should introduce readers to relatively unknown worlds, and to some outstanding scholarship about those worlds. Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries. —P. Harvey, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Jett, Stephen C. Ancient ocean crossings: reconsidering the case for contacts with the pre-Columbian Americas. Alabama, 2017. 508p bibl index ISBN 9780817319397, $49.95; ISBN 9780817390754 ebook, $49.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE December 2017
Evidence for pre-Columbian contact with the Americas has long been debated in academic and non-academic circles. Geographer Jett (emer., Univ. of California, Davis), a major scholar of contact across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, provides an exhaustive discussion of the evidence in support of diffusion of a wide variety of items flowing into and out of the Americas by boat. He presents an in-depth discussion of early watercraft, their types and capabilities for ocean travel; navigational skills, accidental and drift voyages; experimental voyages, such as Kon Tiki; domesticated plant and animal transferals; and DNA evidence and art portrayals of foreign arrivals to Mesoamerica and South America. Jett points to confirmed evidence of contact, such as Andean sweet potatoes in Polynesia and Asian chickens in Chile, as well as a wide range of other probable and possible items introduced between the New and Old Worlds. This 508-page well-researched and written book has 33 pages of notes and a 60-page bibliography. For those interested in pre-1492 long-distance travel and contact over the world’s oceans, this book is a must. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries. —J. B. Richardson III, University of Pittsburgh
Ocean acidification, ed. by Jean-Pierre Gattuso and Lina Hansson. Oxford, 2011. 326p ISBN 9780199591084, $135.00; ISBN 9780199591091 pbk, $67.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE August 2012
This book discusses the historical, geological, biological, physical, chemical, and societal aspects of ocean acidification. It is the first comprehensive review of its kind on this topic. The well-organized volume, with contributions from internationally respected experts, devotes 15 fully referenced chapters introducing the problems presented by the dissolution of increasing amounts of atmospheric CO2 into the oceans. The first chapter discusses the relevant physical and chemical processes, and places the problem in context. Subsequent chapters address past, present, and future ocean chemistry; effects of acidification on marine ecosystems; feedbacks and consequences of acidification on other physical and chemical processes; and societal issues and policy decisions. Chapters are illustrated with high-quality figures and informative tables, many of which are compiled from other sources specifically for this book; e.g., table 7.1 is a 15-page comprehensive list of the effects of acidification on major benthic organisms. This work will serve as a primary reference for anyone concerned about ocean acidification, including scientists and professionals. The writing is clear enough to serve as a reference for motivated students and laypeople. It should be required reading in every course on climate change. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. —N. W. Hinman, University of Montana
Oreskes, Naomi. Science on a mission: how military funding shaped what we do and don’t know about the ocean. Chicago, 2021. 744p bibl index ISBN 9780226732381, $40.00; ISBN 9780226732411 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE October 2021
This important and fascinating work describes the transformation of US ocean science from the outbreak of World War II, through the Cold War, and to the present with its unfolding crisis of climate change. Oreskes (Harvard Univ.) discusses how military spending for oceanographic research drove the development of ocean science and influenced the growth of physical oceanography and marine geophysics. At the outset of World War II, the US Navy and the US Army Air Force recognized that information ocean scientists collected was crucial in antisubmarine warfare, weather forecasting, undersea communications, and navigation. Oreskes focuses primarily on three organizations: the Lamont Geological Observatory (Earth Institute) at Columbia University; the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of the University of California, San Diego; and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Until WW II, institutions such as Scripps and Woods Hole were starved for funds. The Cold War became a “golden age” for funding research, but scientists who benefited were apprehensive that the needs of the Navy were given priority over the interests of fundamental research. The book is well documented and features many interesting stories and illustrations that professionals and academicians will find appealing. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. —J. S. Schwartz, emeritus, CUNY College of Staten Island
Roberts, Callum. The ocean of life: the fate of man and the sea. Viking, 2012. 405p ISBN 9780670023547, $30.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2020
The ocean has long been viewed as a vast, endless resource–one that could never be exhausted or affected by human activities. Because of these attitudes, it has been used as a dumping ground while being indiscriminately overharvested. Thanks to the efforts of many different environmental groups, the public has become increasingly aware of these problems, but other serious issues have received little notice. This book addresses these concerns, including noise pollution, invasive species, plastic pollution, and the effects of climate change on reefs and sea levels as well as ocean acidification. The latter is potentially the worst of all and one of the furthest from public consciousness. Roberts (Univ. of York, UK; The Unnatural History of the Sea, CH, May’08, 45-4944) skillfully presents all these topics and more and provides very cogent arguments against some of the technological “fixes” some scientists have proposed. Although the last quarter of the book concentrates on positive, realistic steps to slow or reverse these trends, the overwhelmingly gloomy tone of earlier chapters may cause some readers to give up before they reach that point. That would be a shame; this book should be required reading for everyone. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. —G. C. Jensen, University of Washington
Whales, whaling, and ocean ecosystems, ed. by James A. Estes et al. California, 2007 (c2006). 402p ISBN 0520248848, $54.95; ISBN 9780520248847, $54.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE May 2007
This splendid, handsomely produced compendium focuses on whale biology and natural history in the context of ecology and whaling practices. Thirty-one chapters are organized under “Background,” “Whales and Whaling,” “Process and Theory,” “Case Studies,” “Social Context,” and “Overview and Synthesis.” The astounding scholarly sweep of this volume is supported by numerous information-loaded tables and figures, presented by 58 contributors. The editors, all leaders in their fields, have accomplished an outstanding organizational feat, and directed the areas of contributions with a comprehensive perspective on all the topics covered. A sample of these include mass extinctions, pelagic ecosystems, evolutionary patterns, taxonomy, whale DNA analyses, industrial whaling, physiology and ecology of extreme body size, in addition to a global view on the geography and the dynamics of distribution in the past century of the most hunted and threatened species of whales. Gray, sperm, and killer whales are some of the ones singled out for special treatment. The impact of such a scholarly contribution cannot but influence what humankind intends to do with the Earth. Politicians in charge of the world’s resources, among others, should not overlook this book. Summing Up: Essential. All levels. —F. S. Szalay, University of New Mexico