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The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime Paperback – June 1, 2005

by William Langewiesche (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 180 ratings
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The open ocean--that vast expanse of international waters--spreads across three-fourths of the globe. It is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. And at a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, it is a place that remains radically free.

With typically understated lyricism, William Langewiesche explores this ocean world and the enterprises--licit and illicit--that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons. But its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems--shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews of the gargantuan ships, and the growth of two pathogens: a modern and sophisticated strain of piracy and its close cousin, the maritime form of the new stateless terrorism.

This is the outlaw sea that Langewiesche brings startlingly into view. The ocean is our world, he reminds us, and it is wild.

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  1. Print length
    239 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    North Point Press
  4. Publication date
    June 1, 2005
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.58 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780865477223
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0865477223
  8. See all details
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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
180 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book compelling, fascinating, and an incredible read. They praise the writing style as brilliant and well-researched. The information is important and helpful for understanding. Readers appreciate the pirate content and consider it a fun read.

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ReadabilityWriting styleInformation qualityPirate content
9 customers mention "Readability"9 positive0 negative

Customers find the book compelling, shocking, and interesting. They describe it as a collection of stories about ships sinking at sea. The book is well-written and full of anecdotes, making it a fun read.

"A fascinating and important book...." Read more

"Well written and full of interesting anecdotes, The Outlaw Sea is a fun read...." Read more

"...The stories are great, but they only paint details and leave the reader hungry for the broad picture. There are few figures...." Read more

"Langewiesche's descriptions of ships sinking at sea are compelling, despite drifting more than occasionally toward the melodramatic...." Read more

9 customers mention "Writing style"7 positive2 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style. They find it clear and brilliantly written, making it a must-read for people interested in how our world works.

"...Beautifully written and well researched" Read more

"...Incisive, brilliantly written, a must read for people interested in how our world economy functions." Read more

"Well written and full of interesting anecdotes, The Outlaw Sea is a fun read...." Read more

"...The book is also lacking in cross-referencing information. There is only a table of contents with cryptic titles like "The wave makers" and no index...." Read more

5 customers mention "Information quality"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book well-researched and informative. They say it's concise and a must-read for people interested. However, some feel the overall picture is missing.

"...Beautifully written and well researched" Read more

"...The sea sagas here are gripping, and there's a lot of important information for everyone concerned about the seas and those who travel on them...." Read more

"...Incisive, brilliantly written, a must read for people interested in how our world economy functions." Read more

"Great help in understanding..." Read more

3 customers mention "Pirate content"3 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the pirate content. They find the section engaging and say the book is a fun read.

"...book about the current state of, among other things, piracy on the high seas. Beautifully written and well researched" Read more

"...The pirate section is great...." Read more

"Well written and full of interesting anecdotes, The Outlaw Sea is a fun read...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • KailuaGirl
    5.0 out of 5 stars Book came fast, clean, beautifully, packaged.
    Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    The book came fast, clean and beautifully packaged, with a personal note from the bookseller. This is a person who takes pride in their service. The book ordered is William Langewiesche The Outlaw Sea. a nonfiction book about the current state of, among other things, piracy on the high seas. Beautifully written and well researched
    One person found this helpful
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  • Matthew A. Bille
    4.0 out of 5 stars Important and chilling book on the state of the oceans
    Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    A fascinating and important book. We all know about Somali pirates, but did you know that old-fashioned pirates with big ships still operate on the high seas? I certainly didn't. Nor did I realize the once-proud profession of "sailor" has become dominated by poorly paid hands who rarely if ever get the traditional perk of shore leave and often can't even speak a common language.
    The author shows us just how wild and little-observed the seas of the world really are, even in the modern age of satellites and surveillance planes. He spends a bit too much of the book on one tragic accident when I'd have liked more detail about the big picture of ocean commerce and crime, but that is my preference. The sea sagas here are gripping, and there's a lot of important information for everyone concerned about the seas and those who travel on them.
    - Matt Bille, author, The First Space Race (TAMU, 2004)
    4 people found this helpful
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  • David Stanley
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic
    Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    A sweeping view of the merchant marine industry on which our comfortable western lives depend. Incisive, brilliantly written, a must read for people interested in how our world economy functions.
    One person found this helpful
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  • LeeAnn Heringer
    3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not crucial
    Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    While the cover blurbs on the book promise another "Prefect Storm" quality reading experience, it's a fine read, but it's not quite that good. The book is broken up into 3 sections, a pirate hijacking in the Asian seas, the Estonia ferry sinking in heavy seas, and the ship breaking beach at Alang, India. The pirate section is great. The ferry sinking less so because in explaining the political fallout, he goes over the same information multiple times. (Though I was shocked at the statistic he threw out that supposedly 20% of all Germans believe that the 9/11 World Trade Center attack was actually done by the United States against its own people.) The 3rd section about the ship breaking industry was the reason I'd picked up the book, but it spends most its space on the Greenpeace efforts to shut down Alang. The author admires Greenpeace more than I do. When during an interview with Greenpeace, he keeps asking what I think is a very interesting question and the Greenpeace representative keeps refusing to answer it, the author says that it's really his fault for asking the wrong question. And since the ship breaking section of the book is over 10 years old (even 5 years old when the book was published in 2004), it leaves the question unanswered about what happened with the whole Greenpeace movement to shut down Alang because I believe ships are still being broken down there, that they have not shut down.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • BT
    5.0 out of 5 stars great
    Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    Timely delivery and a good book
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  • F. LASOR
    4.0 out of 5 stars The ocean's a big place
    Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    Well written and full of interesting anecdotes, The Outlaw Sea is a fun read. Especially revealing about ship breaking, an activity about which I was totally ignorant until I read this book. But after all, what is there to do with ships that have reached the end of their useful life?
    One person found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great help in understanding
    Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    I work for a Congressman on the Foreign Affairs Committee so it helped my understand modern day piracy.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Michel Baudin
    2.0 out of 5 stars Great details, but the broad picture is missing
    Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2005
    Verified Purchase
    The author is a journalist, and journalists are taught to keep the reader's attention by emphasizing individual stories and human interest over statistics, which are supposedly boring. Consequently, this book is a collection of stories. We get to spend time with both pirates and their victims in the Indian Ocean, with the crews of sinking, leaky oil tankers, with the investigators of the sinking of an Estonian ferry, and with shipbreakers on India's Alang beach.

    The stories are great, but they only paint details and leave the reader hungry for the broad picture. There are few figures. We read, for example, that there are over 40,000 large ships on the ocean, but there is no indication of where this estimate comes from. If the ocean is chaos, how do we know how many ships are on it? Also, what does "large" mean? I would have been interested in a table of number of ships by size category, with the source of the data and the author's assessment of their accuracy. We also hear that most ships sail under flags of convenience. Here also, a table of how many ships fly each flag would have given some perspective.

    The same pattern is repeated throughout the book. All the issues are presented through anecdotes, without quantification. For example, we know there is piracy, but not how prevalent it is. At the end of the book, we don't know whether the stories are examples of trends with broad significance or are simply random isolated cases.

    The book is also lacking in cross-referencing information. There is only a table of contents with cryptic titles like "The wave makers" and no index. The only maps are in the lining of the cover, and there are no photographs, which leaves too much to the imagination.
    6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Joann Timuoy
    5.0 out of 5 stars excellent views of the maritime world
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 18, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    Having previously read Langewiesche's book about aviation, Aloft, I was wondering if this was going to be as good, as it was an earlier book, but it was every bit as good, with each chapter covering a different aspect, from piracy to ship breaking, to maritime law. An excellent book, well researched and written in the same easy style as Aloft, with no maritime experience required. Great.
    Report
  • J. R. B. Edwards
    5.0 out of 5 stars Review
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 26, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    A good overview of the law (or lawless) way of the sea.
    Report