Customer Reviews

The Mammoth Book of Storms, Shipwrecks and Sea Disasters: Over 70 First-Hand Accounts of Peril on the High Seas, from St. Paul's Shipwreck to the Prestige Disaster

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Being fond of true stories about the sea, shipwrecks, and that kind of thing, I recently purchased this book after looking at some others on Amazon. I ordered it because I saw that an earlier reviewer scored it with five stars. But, after reading it, I think that it only merits about a three star rating -- in other words, it's okay. Not bad, but five stars? No way! In my opinion, there are much better, more intriguing "reads" on this subject.

It didn't take me very long to get through this book, despite its apparent length. While some of the material was new to me, relatively large portions of it (for me personally, about a quarter of the entire book or more) are comprised of extended extracts from other things I have previously read, such as "Titanic Survivor, The Memoirs of Violet Jessop, Stewardess", or "Owen Chase's Narrative", about how an angry whale charged and sank the whaleship Essex (a true story which was a major inspiration for Melville's Moby Dick). If I hadn't have already seen and read so much of the material in this collection -- if it was mostly new to me and "original" -- I might have ranked it a little higher.

Now, I don't want to jump to any hasty, ill-informed conclusions, but, as it is, I feel like this book might be yet another example (though certainly not one of the worst or most blatant) of an insideous little money-making trend that I've noticed in book publishing in recent years: a publisher contracts some "pro" to be an "editor"; the publisher's staff helps them hastily collect a bunch of topical material that has already been published elsewhere (it's even better if relevant material can be found which is relatively inexpensive to acquire and use, especially if copyrights have expired and one does not have to "shell out" for royalties and the like); the "editor" patches the miscellaneous material together, perhaps adding a quick few notes here and there; somebody cooks up a title; somebody else throws together some splashy cover art; and, then the end product is released and marketed as if it is something "new". It seems like a "rip-off" to me. Buyer beware -- check over things carefully before you make a purchase, and try to go for "originals", not "knock-offs"!

Beautiful book, perfect condition, and extremely informative! This book is outstanding for the seafarer, the ocean lover, and anyone interested in true accounts of what really happened at sea. Thanks for the great adventures!

Not that good of a book. Too vague and uninformative. Not what I was looking for.