The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush
Winner of the John Lyman Book Award for U.S. Maritime History of the North American Society for Oceanic History"An admirable example of the new international intercultural maritime history .Igler charts the economic, demographic, and cultural changes that define the period between the 1780s and 1840s as one of transformation." --CHOICE"The Great Oceantransports the reader on the winds of trade or the trade winds to the multiple worlds of commerce and systems of knowledge created by Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Europeans.  Its scale is grand, embracing waters and lands, humans and animals, and the imperial Pacific while not losing sight of the individuals who negotiated that history-a remarkable achievement." --Gary Okihiro, author ofIsland Worlds: A History of Hawai`i and the United States"Here is U.S. history, maritime history, Pacific Islands history, world history, environmental history, labor history, social history  all in one volume, and all beautifully done. A host of topics--early encounters in the Hawaiian Islands, the economic significance of whaling, the differences and similarities in how various powers established their presences in the Pacific, and more--look different once Igler is done with them. Surprises abound, but so does careful, balanced synthesis. What more could a reader want?" --Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago"David Igler'sThe Great Oceanis a majestic contribution to the globalizing of American history, and an original, environmentally-informed peregrination around North and South America, Oceania, and Asia. Igler follows traders and merchants, epidemic plagues, the slaughter and near decimation of marine mammals, captives and hostages, and the nineteenth-century articulation of a truly Pacific-based natural history of geology, oceanography, climatology, and American empire. It is an allusive work, engaging, richly detailed, and full of compelling stories that change our understanding of life across generations, in and around the world's greatest ocean." --Matt K. Matsuda, Rutgers University