Ship History

The Black Death was one of the deadliest disasters in human history. It was also one of the strangest. In STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF THE BLACK DEATH, Guy Wann takes readers inside a medieval world suddenly overwhelmed by plague carts, mass graves, frightened cities, desperate doctors, bizarre cures, flagellant processions, quarantine ships, wild rumors, and one microscopic bacterium nobody knew existed. Follow the plague from Central Eurasia and the Black Sea to Sicily, Florence, Avignon, London, Cairo, Damascus, Constantinople, and beyond. Meet physicians blaming bad air and ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The shocking true story of the USS Houston, FDR’s legendary lost cruiser, and the epic saga of the survivors who faced one of World War II’s most brutal ordeals—from the acclaimed author of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors “Captivating [and]...

What happens when Blackbeard meets Jesse James? When a monstrous storm tears open time itself over Nassau Harbor, Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, and Calico Jack Rackham are hurled from the Golden Age of Piracy into the brutal world of the American Wild West. San Francisco, 1873. Six-shooters rule the frontier. Outlaws rob the rails. The legends of the Caribbean mean little in a century ruled by gunslingers. To survive, the crew of the Queen Anne's Revenge must trade cutlasses for revolvers, outrun the pirate hunter who followed them through time, and chase a fortune across a lawless frontier. But ...

America’s most decorated warship of World War II, Enterprise was constantly engaged against the Japanese Empire, earning the title “the fightingest ship” in the navy. Her career was eventful, vital, and short. Commissioned in 1938, her bombers sank a submarine just ten days after the Pearl Harbor attack, claiming the first Japanese vessel lost in the war.

"Ryōma!" tells the life story of Sakamoto Ryōma, one of the great figures in the turmoil that engulfed Japan in the years before the 1868 Meiji Restoration. The novel is a masterwork by the prolific historical novelist Shiba Ryōtarō and has sold more than 24 million copies in Japan since publication in 1966—and still counting! The novel has everything: a winning main character, an action-packed plot, swordfights, and romance, but it is also a fascinating, easy-to-digest history lesson about Japan’s response to the shocking arrival of United States Commodore Matthew Perry’s “...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year “Gorgeous.... With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.”—Madeline Miller, author of Circe Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, a gorgeous...

The Vikings were not just horned-helmeted raiders charging out of the fog. In fact, the horned helmets are mostly nonsense—and the real story is far stranger. STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS dives into the bizarre, brutal, funny, and often unbelievable world of the Norse. From runic graffiti scratched into ancient buildings and warriors who filed grooves into their teeth to berserkers, funeral ships, strange gods, seeresses, slave markets, royal feuds, and voyages that reached North America centuries before Columbus, this book uncovers the Viking Age beyond the usual ...

Do you think the ocean is a dangerous place? Yes, it can be. Titanic…Amoco Cadiz…Herald of Free Enterprise…Exxon Valdez…every shipwreck tells a story. Veteran sea captain Beetashok Chatterjee reveals the stories behind 13 of the greatest civilian maritime disasters, outside the realms of war, that shook the world. Not just for the number of lives lost, but in some cases the damage caused to the environment and livelihoods, or the media attention those incidents garnered. Allow him to take you back in time and on the high seas, where you can watch and learn from these disasters—...

⛏️ REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION! ⛏️ ⛏️ THE MOST EPIC AND EXPANSIVE NORSE MYTHOLOGY BIBLE ON AMAZON!⛏️ ⛏️ DOUBLE THE PAGES OF OTHER BOOKS!⛏️ This sprawling thirty-chapter book includes all major tales of Norse Mythology. From Thor and mischievous Loki to the twilight of the gods known as Ragnarök. Also included is the decryption of Runes, exploring Spells, Ásatrú, European history, warfare, ancient inspirations, to even expansive pages from the ancient book known as Poetic Edda. Each chapter will include stunning paintings to kindle the ancient Viking dreams... To ...

In a chilling exploration of a nearly forgotten chapter of history, Marcus Rediker delves into the dark depths of slave ships in the 18th century. In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the...

They survived capture—only to be imprisoned aboard ships designed for death. During the Second World War, tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees were transported across the Japanese Empire aboard vessels that became known as hell ships. Packed into dark, airless cargo holds, the prisoners endured suffocating heat, starvation, disease, dehydration, beatings, and conditions so overcrowded that men could barely sit or breathe. There were few toilets, almost no medical supplies, and little hope of escape. Yet the greatest danger often came from above. Because many...

Two catastrophes. One unshakable truth: the moment humanity declares something invincible is the moment disaster starts writing its opening line. Great Disasters 2-in-1 brings together Dominic Haynes's gripping accounts of the Titanic and Chernobyl — two of history's most devastating reminders that confidence is not the same as safety.

Discover the spine-chilling history of ghosts and the supernatural across the world in this stunning guide. A History of Ghosts, Spirits & the Supernatural charts the extraordinary narrative of one of the most fascinating and controversial subjects in the world, covering everything from...

Winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award · Shortlisted for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award · A Library Journal Best History Book of the Year A definitive, sweeping account of the Underground Railroad’s long-overlooked maritime origins, from a pre-eminent...

When a sinkhole nearly swallows her whole, burned-out history professor Philippa Flynn takes it as a wake-up call. Leaving her carefully planned but unfulfilling life behind, she moves into an old seaside house she inherited from her grandmother, a bestselling author of swashbuckling romances. Philippa expects the clutter, disrepair, proximity to the family she deliberately moved away from, and reclusive writer she’ll be sharing the house with. She doesn’t expect that writer to also be the cover model who personified Iris Flynn’s bare-chested, cavalier-booted pirate king.

A propulsive human drama that chronicles the mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe to America in the early years of the twentieth century, and the men who made it possible. Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern...

“If you read only one American history book this summer . . . make it David S. Reynolds’s Two Ships.” —George Will, Washington Post “Brilliant, provocative . . . Essential reading for today’s polarized times.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "A dazzling survey of three centuries of...

A Best Book of the Year from The Observer Narrated by the New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes herself, this audiobook is an extraordinary reimagining of the myth of Medea. This is what no one tells you, in the songs sung about Jason and the Argo. This part of his quest has been...

""As thrilling as any tale from the heroic age of exploration. ... Bound’s account is a triumph. The storytelling is piano-wire taut, the writing saturated with polar moodiness."" ― Sunday Times The extraordinary story of how the Endurance, Ernest Shackleton's legendary lost ship, was found...

Hoist the mizzenmast and batten down those bloody hatches: Pirates! Scoundrels Who Shook the World tells the hilarious-but-true adventures of history’s most amazing pirates.