The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail

Winner of the Bancroft Prize

A sweeping environmental history of the North Atlantic, The Mortal Sea reveals how centuries of fishing turned a rich ocean into an “exhausted sea” and offers a powerful cautionary tale about our precarious relationship with the natural world.

Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdepend...