The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail

"It’s beautifully written, and shows an extraordinary familiarity with the sea—the author is himself a sailor as well as a professor. In the same way that medievalists say Marc Bloch ’s work has the smell of the barnyard to it—in a good way—when you read Jeffrey Bolster, you can smell the salt of the sea. Probably there’s no one else with the environmental history training and experience in sailing. The other thing I like about this book is that, although most of it is about the Gulf of Maine (that is, the waters between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Nova Scotia), it tries to take the whole North Atlantic into account, beginning with the medieval history of fishing in the northeastern Atlantic, in the North Sea and the waters around the British Isles. It proceeds into the 20th century, stopping in the 1920s. “Environmental history is the evolution through time of the relationship between societies and the ecosystems on which they depend” So, it tackles a huge geographical scope and a lengthy chronological scope. I should confess to a bias in favour of works on a big canvas. There are lots of micro studies that I admire too, but if I regard two books as equally skilled in execution, the one that tackles the bigger canvas is usually the one I prefer. I think that’s reflected in the five choices I’ve made. By no means universally, but frequently yes. The proportion of environmental historians who would identify as environmentalists is far higher than among historians in general. And when it comes to identifying as an outdoorsman or -woman, I would say the same is true, maybe even to a larger extent. It’s a rare environmental historian who doesn’t like to be out and about in the great outdoors."