A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My first impression of this book was that it was going to be slightly gimmicky, by focusing on twelve cherry-picked events and spreading out from there, and I was right.

That is not to say that it wasn't entertaining, because it was. I suppose I might have gotten more out of it if the writing had been more engaging, even more narrative. We did get some of the circumstances of some of the crews, of course, where we actually have history for them, and in general, I was happy to see context spiral out further and further from the core wrecks.

As it is, we got ancient boats all the way up to subs, and it had much more depth to it, more details, than I might have expected.

Interestingly, though, as I was reading it, I was struck by the idea that all of this would have been much more engaging as if it had been written as though from the ghosts of true sea men. Alas, however, it wasn't to be.



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