MAY 2018 - AudioFile
Here’s an audiobook to listen to on a road trip. Passionately narrated by the author, this brief memoir recounts Nathaniel Philbrick’s youthful successes as a Sunfish sailor and racer. Philbrick narrates his story with verve and pays great attention to sailing lore and history. He comes from a sailing family and shares his passion with his wife and kids, who are costars in this fast-paced story of sea and skiff. As a youth, he trained on the ponds of his native Nantucket and, in one harrowing scene, he and his little Sunfish are almost washed out to sea. Happily, he makes it back and to his race (without the same success). But in this effervescent memoir, to sail is to win. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
Praise for Second Wind
“Describing his races tack-by-tack and gust-by-gust, Philbrick crosses the finish line with sure-to-be satisfied readers interested in sailing and the personal life of this highly popular author.”—Booklist
Praise for Valiant Ambition:
"May be one of the greatest what-if books of the age—a volume that turns one of America's best-known narratives on its head."—Boston Globe
"A suspenseful, richly detailed, and deeply researched book about the revolutionary struggle that bound George Washington and Benedict Arnold together and almost disastrous dysfunction of America's revolutionary government that helped drive them apart."—The New York Review of Books
"Clear and insightful, it consolidates his reputation as one of America's foremost practitioners of narrative nonfiction."—Wall Street Journal
"Philbrick is both a meticulous historian and a captivating storyteller. The book has unforgettable novelistic details [and] also contains much astute historical analysis and argument. Philbrick sees Arnold not as the man who almost lost the war so much as the catalyst that helped to win it."—Christian Science Monitor
Praise for Bunker Hill:
"A masterpiece of narrative and perspective."—Boston Globe
"A tour de force . . ."—Chicago Tribune
"Popular history at its best—a taut narrative with a novelist's touch, grounded in careful research."—Miami Herald
"A story that resonates with leadership lessons for all times."—Walter Isaacson, The Washington Post
MAY 2018 - AudioFile
Here’s an audiobook to listen to on a road trip. Passionately narrated by the author, this brief memoir recounts Nathaniel Philbrick’s youthful successes as a Sunfish sailor and racer. Philbrick narrates his story with verve and pays great attention to sailing lore and history. He comes from a sailing family and shares his passion with his wife and kids, who are costars in this fast-paced story of sea and skiff. As a youth, he trained on the ponds of his native Nantucket and, in one harrowing scene, he and his little Sunfish are almost washed out to sea. Happily, he makes it back and to his race (without the same success). But in this effervescent memoir, to sail is to win. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-12-07
In a new edition of a book first published in 1999, the National Book Award-winning author recalls a "watershed" year in the early 1990s when he seriously took up sailing, a sport he had abandoned when he was in his 20s.At the time, Philbrick (Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, 2016, etc.) was a stay-at-home dad working on a book about Nantucket, where he and his wife and two kids lived, while his old, "dirt-encrusted" Sunfish, the "VW bug" of sailboats, leaned against the house. Deciding to spiff it up and get back on the water, the author set a goal of competing in the 1993 Sunfish North Americans, to be held the following July "on a man-made lake in Springfield, Illinois." To get back in shape, Philbrick hauled the boat to one after another of Nantucket's many ponds and, during the winter, rented a boat to compete in a regatta in Florida. The narrative is wryly honest. The author performed respectably in Florida and Illinois, but he didn't blow the competition away in any last-minute comebacks. Instead, he took pleasure—and pain—in the experiences of sailing on a regular basis. He describes with infectious joy the experience of catching a stray bit of wind or surging over the waves in a harbor, and he relays with astonishment the luck he feels at having survived some questionable sailing choices. Since much of his sailing was done under adverse conditions—in water so cold that he had to break the ice to sail or in air so still that races were postponed because boats couldn't move—readers will feel lucky to share the experiences vicariously. The author keeps his chapters short and punchy, and his obscure sailing terminology to a minimum, while revealing much about his connection to a supportive if sometimes-skeptical family.An amiably witty book about sailing that will appeal as strongly to the uninitiated as to the addicted.
