Part science, part history, this ambitious non-fiction includes almost every aspect of the Atlantic Ocean. It covers a diverse array of topics such as its origins, discovery of the gulf stream, early inventions for maritime navigation, explorations, famous shipwrecks, piracy, the slave trade, maritime battles, migration, commerce by ship and air, artistic and literary references, information dissemination, global warming, and predicted lifespan. The author includes many of his own anecdotes from his travels and time as a journalist.

The book has its ups and downs. The amount of material covered is staggering. Certain sections are illuminating, while others are less successful. The author took a shotgun approach to relaying the material, and it was easy to get lost in the minutia. I was occasionally tempted to disengage while he cited various statistics. Listening to the audio book enhanced my enjoyment of this book that might otherwise have been a bit dull. Simon Winchester is an excellent reader with a mellifluous voice. Overall, I learned a great deal about the Atlantic and recommend the audio version to those interested in the science and history of the earth’s bodies of water. ( )

This was a fun read--as always with Simon Winchester there was a total over-abundance of detail but he had a ton of personal anecdotes which were interesting. A little overwhelming on audiobook--would probably recommend as a regular book. ( )

Excellent. Very well written. Authoritative but not pedantic. Reminds me of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel in his approach and thoroughness. ( )

I didn't feel this book lived up to its title: "Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories". Part of my disappointment may have been thinking it would live up to the subtitle and be more exciting. The only part of the subtitle which seemed accurate was the part about "a million stories". Winchester covered a lot, perhaps too much, from the formation of the earth and oceans over the past millions of years to early man all the way through to using the oceans as a waste site. The facts were there, but the adventure was lacking.
It was a challenging subject, no doubt. If you try an equivalent story on land, say starting in central Kansas and then going a thousand miles in any or all directions, you've got a wide variety of different terrain and climates, peoples and life forms to discuss. Winchester's book starts in the middle of the Atlantic, and if you go a thousand miles in any or all directions, you've pretty much got what you started with. So his work was cut out for him, and he does cover many aspects of the ocean and life around the ocean, but all in all, the story never quite came together for me. ( )

One of my general rules of thumb is that the more the author is a character in a nonfiction book, the worse it is. (Or at least, the more the author is a character in a book for which the author is not also the subject.) An author telling a story about Place X is good; an author telling a story about the time they visited Place X is almost always going to be less good. It feels like a lazy crutch — that the author didn't have enough material to let it stand on their own, and had to insert their own story to pad it out.

The many adventures of Simon Winchester appear liberally in this book, which I think partly explains why I like it so much less than his other popular science books, such as [b:Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883|25017|Krakatoa The Day the World Exploded August 27, 1883|Simon Winchester|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1407108467l/25017._SY75_.jpg|2084098] or [b:The Map That Changed the World|25014|The Map That Changed the World|Simon Winchester|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436981852l/25014._SY75_.jpg|1413457]. It's not that his stories are bad — they are often evocative and occasionally quite gripping, as when he got arrested as a spy during the Falklands War or was nearly trapped to starve on Greenland. (He relates at least three near-death experiences.) But they're emblematic of a book that's more a collection of vignettes, little of it novel, rather than a look into a fascinating topic. ( )