In the age of sail, the boats were an essential part of any ship's equipment. They moved stores, towed the ship in calms and in confined water, and, for warships, were an extention of their armament. Over the centuries there were almost countless sizes, hull forms and rigs employed, so the exact details have always been a problem to modelmakers, marine artists and even those building replicas.

Tells the story of Doug Von Allmen's plan to build an extraordinary yacht and the way that the 2008 financial crisis threatened the project and the livelihood of the one thousand employees of the shipyard where it was built.

The fascinating story of fiberglass boats and the mavericks who dreamed them. Nine out of ten sailors today own sturdy, often beautiful fiberglass craft. Fiberglass brought boating to the non-rich, but the history of that revolution has never been told. Daniel Spurr rectifies this omission with his highly readable and affectionate account of the fiberglass boat, from its earliest incarnation in World War II to the present day. In the early days, when shoestring genius was unfettered by industrial efficiency, therewere boats with tailfins, boats baked in ovens, and boats designed to be dropped from planes. The voyage from those first ugly ducklings to the graceful boats of the 1990s makes a riveting adventure of triumph and ruin. Along the way, Spurr profiles landmark designs that now set the standards in the used-boat market, and he portrays the revolution in human terms, introducing us to the vivid personalities who invented--often in their garages and rarely at a profit--the world of boating we know today.

This book is a history of the Measurement Rule and of its effects upon yacht design. It traces the many attempts to find a satisfactory rule, or definition of the size of a yacht for racing purposes, and closes with the final adoption, on February 18, 1931, of The New York Yacht Club rule, for large yachts, Classes J, K, and L, by the Yacht Racing Association of Great Britain.

"Once I picked it up I did not put it down until I finished. . . . What Schwed has done is capture fully-in deceptively clean language-the lunacy at the heart of the investment business." -- From the Foreword by Michael Lewis, Bestselling author of Liar's Poker ". . . one of the funniest books ever written about Wall Street." -- Jane Bryant Quinn, The Washington Post "How great to have a reissue of a hilarious classic that proves the more things change the more they stay the same. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." -- Michael Bloomberg "It's amazing how well Schwed's book is holding up after fifty-five years. About the only thing that's changed on Wall Street is that computers have replaced pencils and graph paper. Otherwise, the basics are the same. The investor's need to believe somebody is matched by the financial advisor's need to make a nice living. If one of them has to be disappointed, it's bound to be the former." -- John Rothchild, Author, A Fool and His Money, Financial Columnist, Time magazine Humorous and entertaining, this book exposes the folly and hypocrisy of Wall Street. The title refers to a story about a visitor to New York who admired the yachts of the bankers and brokers. Naively, he asked where all the customers' yachts were? Of course, none of the customers could afford yachts, even though they dutifully followed the advice of their bankers and brokers. Full of wise contrarian advice and offering a true look at the world of investing, in which brokers get rich while their customers go broke, this book continues to open the eyes of investors to the reality of Wall Street.

Tells the unlikely story of Silicon Valley through the life of one of its great achievers--Jim Clark, who founded Silicon Graphics and Netscape and may be on the verge of another trillion-dollar company.

“An extraordinary story of bravery and insanity on the high seas. . . . One of the most gripping sea stories I have ever read.” — Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm In the tradition of Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm, comes a breathtaking oceanic adventure about an obsessive desire to test the limits of human endurance. In 1968 nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held and never before completed: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death. Gorgeously written and meticulously researched by author Peter Nichols, this extraordinary book chronicles the contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones, satellite dishes, and electronic positioning systems. A Voyage for Madmen is a tale of sailors driven by their own dreams and demons, of horrific storms, and of those riveting moments when a decision means the difference between life and death.