Customer Reviews

Let the Sea Make a Noise...: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to Macarthur

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The best books are those so rich in character and content that you can revisit them time and again, certain that you will discover new layers of enjoyment and insight with each reading. Walter A. McDougall's "Let the Sea Make a Noise... : A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur" is just such a book. How fortunate we are that Perennial has newly released this volume in paperback!

McDougall takes the reader on a glorious (though sometimes harrowing) journey through time. He has succeeded in combining painstaking research and carefully considered commentary with a wonderfully woven and witty narrative. This gripping tale of the North Pacific is a genuine page-turner: a rare treat on the menu of today's history books!

Contrary to the lone opinion of a Washington State Amazon reader, rest assured that "Let the Sea Make a Noise..." is a balanced and scholarly presentation of the complexities of international relations. Written in the early 1990s (when Japan's economic prominence in the midst of Soviet collapse was the source of widespread international concern), McDougall's insights in "Let the Sea Make a Noise..." are often profoundly visionary and always poignant and honest. He has done an outstanding job of crafting an entertaining, yet intricate examination of the motivating forces that have shaped a wondrous region of our planet.

Once you have enjoyed this book, be sure to seek out McDougall's just-published "Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828".

As a former student of Professor McDougall, I am fully aware of his many talents as a teacher and a writer. In Let the Sea Make a Noise, Professor McDougall shares all of his talents in a most enjoyable fashion.

The running conversation between several of the siginficant personalities who shaped the history of the Pacific explains why events unfolded as they did. Although lighthearted at times, these conversations clearly set forth the policies and morals possessed by the nations who constantly struggled in this vast expanse.

Similarly, Professor McDougall's descriptions of the significant events of this era are outstanding. It often feels like you are there.

Most noteworthy, Professor McDougall cuts to the heart of the issues, shares only the essential facts, and demonstrates their significance. Thus, the reader can appreciate the complex multitiude of attitudes, personalities, and morals that caused nations to act the way they did.

Always entertaining and certainly insightful, this book is a must read for any person interested in the history of this region.

With the subtitle "A history of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur" and a thickness of 2.5 inches, this Pulitzer Prize-winning author's book might seem awfully heavy reading.

It's not.

Let the Sea Make a Noise has all the elements of a world-class adventure yarn, made more exciting because the tale is actually true. McDougall begins by exploring different ways of enticing casual readers to plunge into his story. Thanks to this device and his flowing style, you're well into the book before coming up for air. By then, however, you'll be enmeshed in the ebbs and flows among Spanish California, Imperial Russia, Japan, Alaska, the kingdom of Hawaii and the United States.

Any story, no matter how gifted the writer, lives or dies by the elements of the tale. McDougall has chosen well -- during the last four centuries the Pacific has been washed by successive waves of expansion, conquering, defeat, retreat, retrenchment and return.

McDougall carefully shows how two countries' interactions have affected other countries -- sometimes in surprising and unexpected ways. He intersperses his narrative with conversations among historical figures that a reader might initially find artificial but eventually will anticipate.

McDougall correctly realizes that tales of momentous times read best when they're seen through the eyes of the people experiencing them.

After all, people make history.

c1997, Camie Foster

This is a terrific book. It is the history of the Pacific Ocean for the past 400 years. It is surprising what that involves because so many nations from all around the world made strenuous efforts to control, colonize, and conquer so many places along its continental coasts and its many islands. It also involves many different indigenous cultures and a hugely changing political scene.

One of the reasons I love the book is Walter McDougall's lively and engaging writing style. This is a book of solid scholarship, but it is full of art as well. One of the problems facing anyone who would write such a history is how to tell it in a coherent way. McDougall came up with a brilliant literary solution. He has the author dream the key characters in periodic conversations about the events under consideration with the Hawiian Kaahumanu as the central and governing center of the wheel. Reading this book was a real pleasure for me. I read a lot and widely, and this book was a special pleasure.

It begins in 1565 with early European exploration of the Pacific and ends just after the Second World War and ends with a bunch of questions, ponderables, the author calls them, about the 1990s. Some of them seem to have been acted on, but many issues continue to this day and some new ones could be added to the list. Along the way there is the settling of Alaska, of Russian ambition, of Japans rise from its isolation to become a military empire, of China, of Spain, of the rise of America and Canada. It is a story of commerce, religion, culture, and of great violence. Hugely dramatic and very informative.

I know it will seem unlike any other history you have ever read. And that is only one of its many virtues.

e. The tumultuous daring and suffering of the explorers of the North Pacific has never been so vividly and breathtakingly brought to life on the page. That this book should be written by an academic with a Ph.D no less makes it all the more amazing. This is narrative history as Francis Parkman would be writing it if alive today. Fanciers of Patrick O'Brien and the Forester novels should look into this book. Truth here is stanger than fiction--and just as well written.

"Let the Sea Make a Noise" forges historical scholarship with insightful notions about the realms encompassing the north Pacific Ocean. The author, Walter A. McDougall, spent untold hours researching and organizing minutia then interweaving vast history replete with sensory details; human and political failings, dreams, and successes; meteorological and geographic facts; and overlooked, obscure bits of history.

Consequently, the book itself is somewhat overwhelming for it is nearly impossible to absorb this level of detail or maintain a clear understanding of the myriad relationships and ideologies the author presents.

I suppose having too much detail is better than not enough in any book of this sort, and Mr. McDougall is never shy about throwing in what may be a touch of conjecture. One cannot really know what some of the many people profiled here might have been thinking, but ultimately the scope of the book prevails, and one must admire the tenacity and effort funneled in to this book.

Be prepared to invest some time reading this history but be forewarned that you may have to put the book down from time to time to let the facts and information swamp you like a big wave---and I found I wasn't always that eager to jump back in for more.

I appreciate the earlier reader comments. But there is a major aspect of Walter A. McDougall's "Let the Sea Make a Noise" they may have missed.

McDougal treats the history of events as expressions of viewpoints of those events. It is as though a light shone on the events, and the light passed through a prism, which broke the light into its component colors. All of these colors represent different views of those events. In other words, historical events and their significance will be seen differently by different persons.

McDougall is aware of these different views, and he respects them. But perhaps his greatest success as a writer of history is this: he does not merely present the various viewpoints, and let us make up our underinformed minds. Instead, he fictitiously brings back to life various historical figures, and puts the different opinions in their mouths. Most of these characters disagree with the "author," who expresses McDougall's views. These characters are a brilliant device for presenting conflicting -- or balancing -- views of historical events.

In a lighter vein -- when I see a public project where the taxpayers are being ripped off, I think of one of McDougall's characters. He is a Russian, who sees that the U.S.A. is better off than Russia because their big-time ripoff artists merely rob the public, while ours actually do create worthwhile projects. Of course the book was written before our huge financial meltdown.

It's a great read. Get it. Enjoy it.

Walter McDougall has insightfully woven the history of the interactions of the nations surrounding the North Pacific in a manner that addresses the national interests of each and their attempts to protect those interests which unfortunately often created havoc. A splendid tapestry of successes and failures in statecraft. The author has done so in lively language as opposed to the usual dry presentation so often employed by academics. This work is entertaining and informative for everyone not just those with an interest in history and politics.

This is one of those books that a) read really racist only a few years after they're written, and b)are really off when it comes to speculating about the future.

For example: this book rah-rah's the United States, glossing over ther racism experienced by Japanese, Chinese, and of course, the Hawaiians. The fact that Hawaiians got screwed out of most of their country, is ignored, as is the massive genocide of Californian Native Americans.

What's most striking to me, though, is the utter lack of vision- McDougall utterly doesn't anticipate the rapid rise of China, (who "always slays itself") nor the torpor of present day Japan.

McDougall's also quite ignorant about how things haven't really changed in Japan (the power centers are still pretty much what they were during the war, only now, they're just not militarisitc.)