Honorable Mention, Theodore Saloutos Book Award, given by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society A vivid, new portrait of Irish migration through the letters and diaries of those who fled their homeland during the Great Famine The standard story of the exodus during Ireland’s Great Famine is one of tired clichés, half-truths, and dry statistics. In The Coffin Ship, a groundbreaking work of transnational history, Cian T. McMahon offers a vibrant, fresh perspective on an oft-ignored but vital component of the migration experience: the journey itself. Between 1845 and 1855, over two million people fled Ireland to escape the Great Famine and begin new lives abroad. The so-called “coffin ships” they embarked on have since become infamous icons of nineteenth-century migration. The crews were brutal, the captains were heartless, and the weather was ferocious. Yet the personal experiences of the emigrants aboard these vessels offer us a much more complex understanding of this pivotal moment in modern history. Based on archival research on three continents and written in clear, crisp prose, The Coffin Ship analyzes the emigrants’ own letters and diaries to unpack the dynamic social networks that the Irish built while voyaging overseas. At every stage of the journey—including the treacherous weeks at sea—these migrants created new threads in the worldwide web of the Irish diaspora. Colored by the long-lost voices of the emigrants themselves, this is an original portrait of a process that left a lasting mark on Irish life at home and abroad. An indispensable read, The Coffin Ship makes an ambitious argument for placing the sailing ship alongside the tenement and the factory floor as a central, dynamic element of migration history.

This sailing thriller chronicles the life of a zealous Norwegian cruising yachtsman & author aboard his 50 foot wooden sailboat, L'ARTEMIS DE PYTHEAS. After building his yacht himself in French Guiana, Peter Tangvald & his young wife set off on an adventure that brings them both great joy & incredible tragedy. Tangvald experiences the joy of the birth of his children at sea, & despair after losing two wives at sea, one murdered by ruthless pirates & one swept overboard in a dreadful accident. This extraordinary man traveled to obscure corners of the world, testing the boundaries of his strength & endurance. He left us this legacy before the sea claimed his life & that of his young daughter in 1991 off the coast of Bonaire. His son, Thomas, is the lone survivor of this ill fated family. AT ANY COST - LOVE, LIFE & DEATH AT SEA can be purchased directly from the publisher: Cruising Guide Publications, P.O. Box 1017, Dunedin, FL 34697-1017. Wholesale prices are available on request.

You Choose lets YOU control the story! Readers "step into the shoes" of characters facing the challenges and decisions that real people have encountered while lost at sea.

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“The great poems, plays, novels, stories teach us how to go on living. . . . Your own mistakes, accidents, failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can.” So Harold Bloom, the most famous literary critic of his generation, exhorts readers of his last book: one that praises the sustaining power of poetry. "Passionate. . . . Perhaps Bloom’s most personal work, this is a fitting last testament to one of America’s leading twentieth-century literary minds."—Publishers Weekly “An extraordinary testimony to a long life spent in the company of poetry and an affecting last declaration of [Bloom's] passionate and deeply unfashionable faith in the capacity of the imagination to make the world feel habitable”—Seamus Perry, Literary Review "Reading, this stirring collection testifies, ‘helps in staying alive.’“—Kirkus Reviews, starred review This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death—completed weeks before Harold Bloom died—shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called “a universe of death.” Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of life’s troubles, taking readers on a grand tour of the poetic voices that have haunted him through a lifetime of reading. “High literature,” he writes, “is a saving lie against time, loss of individuality, premature death.” In passages of breathtaking intimacy, we see him awake late at night, reciting lines from Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, Blake, Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Jay Wright, and many others. He feels himself “edged by nothingness,” uncomprehending, but still sustained by reading. Generous and clear‑eyed, this is among Harold Bloom’s most ambitious and most moving books.

Swimming in a Sea of Death is David Rieff's loving tribute to his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, and her final battle with cancer. Rieff's brave, passionate and unsparing witness of the last nine months of her life is both an intensely personal portrait of the relationship between a mother and a son, and a reflection on what it means to confront death in our culture. David Rieff confronts his feelings in relation to his motherandmdash;the guilt, the self-questioning, the sense of not having done enough. And he tries to understand what it means to desire so desperately, as his mother did to the end of her life, and to try almost anything in order to go on living.

Fierce Vikings and mystical Sirens face each other in a neverending battle to claim the most significant natural resource their world has to offer: the sea. For generations, Viking clans have faced Siren tribes in battles waged on land and sea. Battles that pit brute strength against sorcery, and cunning versus charm. Their war has torn apart the very world they fight over while also filling graveyards that span farther than the eye can see. But on these battlefields, you are just as likely to encounter love as you are death. These are the tales of their mythical encounters. These are the tales of the Sirens of the Norse Sea.