With surprising tales of vicious mutineers, imperial riches, and high-seas intrigue, Black Flags, Blue Waters is “rumbustious enough for the adventure-hungry” (Peter Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle).Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age” - spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s - when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of N...

The heroic story of the founding of the US Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America's first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation's character—above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos.In Rebels at Sea, Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers ...

With A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus's New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of unlikely heroes and puts us in the middle of the most devastating storms of the past, none worse than the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, wh...

A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan AwardWinner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place"A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles TimesAs Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that...

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“An exciting and at times almost unbelievably dramatic story.” —Michael O’Donnell, Wall Street JournalNew York Times • “The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026”Goodreads • "Readers’ Most Anticipated Books of Summer… and the Rest of the Year!"Kirkus Reviews • "40 Hottest Reads for Summer of 2026"Book Riot • Best New Nonfiction Releases of 2026An Indepe...

Ancient China collides with newfangled America in this epic tale of opium smugglers, sea pirates, and dueling clipper ships.Brilliantly illuminating one of the least-understood areas of American history, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin now traces our fraught relationship with China back to its roots: the unforgiving nineteenth-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire. It is a prescient fable for our time, one that su...

New York Times • “The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026”An astonishing true story—one of the most gripping maritime sagas of the nineteenth century—told by our era’s “expert literary steersman” (Washington Post).From the best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters comes the story of the American whaleship Mentor, wrecked in 1832 on a r...

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy's "Golden Age"—spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s—when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Bestselling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. Through ...

**A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History"The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation." —Nathaniel Philbrick**The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an in...

The true story of five castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812—a tale of treachery, shipwreck, isolation, and the desperate struggle for survival.In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin—“one of today’s finest writers about ships and the sea” (American Heritage)—tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago du...

In a work rich in maritime lore and brimming with original historical detail, Eric Jay Dolin, the bestselling author of Leviathan, presents the most comprehensive history of American lighthouses ever written, telling the story of America through the prism of its beloved coastal sentinels. Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fo...

In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin—“one of today’s finest writers about ships and thesea” (American Heritage)—tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounterbetween an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a Britishwarship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812.Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailorsand two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard,