America and the sea : a maritime history / by Benjamin W. Labaree ... [and others].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Pt. 1. Becoming America, to 1815. 1. The Beginnings. 2. The Rise of English America, 1660-1760. 3. To American Independence. 4. Maritime Dimensions of Revolution and Confederation. 5. Maritime Affairs in the New Republic. 6. Embargo and War -- Pt. 2. The Expanding Nation, 1815-1865. 7. Maritime Developments in an Age of Optimism. 8. Maritime America in a Wider World. 9. Modern Technology, Modern Warfare, and the Troubled Course of American Maritime and Naval Enterprise -- Pt. 3. Rise to World Power, 1865-1939. 10. The Sea and Post-Civil-War America. 11. The Rise of Maritime Professionalism and Regulation. 12. Expansion and Transformation of Maritime America. 13. World War I. 14. The Interwar Years -- Pt. 4. World War II and After, 1939-. 15. World War II. 16. American Maritime and Naval Policy Since World War II. 17. Americans Take to the Sea. Appendix. American Maritime Museums.

America and the Sea: A Maritime History is the most comprehensive maritime history of the United States available today. Spanning the centuries from Native American and Viking maritime activities before Columbus through today's maritime enterprise, the text provides a new history of the U.S. from the fundamental perspective of the sea that surrounds it, and the rivers and lakes that link its vast interior to the seacoast.

It is a story that affects us all, often in surprising ways, a story that explains much about the nation and its people today.

America and the Sea is gratefully written by six prominent scholars in the field, whose individual areas of historical research and teaching range from labor to technology, fisheries, and the U.S. Navy. Informed by their long experience teaching together in the Munson Institute at Mystic Seaport, they incorporate considerations of art, literature, and poetry along with their discussions of the economic, political, diplomatic, and technological foundations of American maritime history.

Their narrative treatment is punctuated and augmented with quotations from period documents and particularly with brief essays by some noted young scholars that add insight and expand on the human dimensions of America's relationship with the sea.