This book was commissioned especially for the Smithsonian Museum but it is much more than a companion volume. Deborah Cramer, a gifted science writer often compared to Rachel Carson, has written an engaging and perspective-changing history of the ocean which is accompanied by 300 photographs.
Our lives depend on the sea. The ocean has been earth's lifeline for more than three and a half billion years. But as Cramer reveals in this sweeping look at earth's biography, the vital partnership between earth and the life it nourishes has recently been disrupted. Today, a single terrestrial species, man, has begun to alter the health of the sea itself and the mark of humans on the seas is now everywhere.
This elegant, lovingly written book immerses readers in the symbiosis between humanity and the sea. Deborah Cramer's sweeping work introduces us to the ancestral ocean, on which human influence has now grown profound, and charges us to rejuvenate our essential partnership with its wondrous rhythms and life-giving waters.
- Paul EpsteinCenter for Global Health and the Environment, Harvard Medical School
"Authoritatively researched, clearly written, and beautifully illustrated, this book is best of its class."
- EO Wilson