The Enduring Shore: A History of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket

by Paul Schneider

Overview

Even before the Pilgrims landed in 1620, Cape Cod and its islands promised paradise to visitors, both native and European. In Paul Schneider's sure hands, the story of this waterland created by glaciers and refined by storms and tides — and of its varied inhabitants — becomes an irresistible biography of a place.

Cape Cod's Great Beach, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket are romantic stops on Schneider's roughly chronological human and natural history. His book is a lucid and compelling collage of seaside ecology, Indians and colonists, religion and revolution, shipwrecks and hurricanes, whalers and vengeful sperm whales, glorious clipper ships and today's beautiful but threatened beaches. Schneider's superb eye for story and detail illuminates both history and landscape. A wonderful introduction, it will also appeal to the millions of people who already have warm associations with these magical places.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805067347
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/01/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,068,785
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Paul Schneider, author of the highly praised and successful The Adirondacks, a 1997 New York Times Notable Book, lives with his wife and child in Martha's Vineyard.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
1	Capawack	3
2	Cuttyhunk	8
3	Vineyard Sound	16
4	Naushon	24
5	Tarpaulin Cove	34
6	Chatham	42
7	Nashawena	49
8	Golgotha	64
9	Provincetown	74
10	Long Point	83
11	Truro	92
12	Plymouth	98
13	Barnstable	108
14	Manomoyik	113
15	Sandwich	123
16	The South Shore	139
17	Nantucket	145
18	Over the Bar	166
19	Sankaty Head	180
20	The Gulf Stream	190
21	Clay Pounds	203
22	Awaite Pawana	215
23	Cape Verde	217
24	The Horn	233
25	Home!	254
26	Into the Blue	264
27	South Pacific	276
28	Out of the Blue	290
29	The Great Beach	303
30	Oak Bluffs	307
31	Scorton Creek	322
	Notes	329
	Index	345

Editorial Reviews

For anyone who wishes to know how the Cape and Islands came to be . . .” —Paul Theroux, The New York Times Book Review

“Quite simply, the most entertaining history about our part of the world that I have ever read.” —Tom Dunlop, The Vineyard Gazette

“A charged must-read for anyone who ever fell asleep in American History.” —Esquire

“Leapfrogs from natural history to social history to personal history in an engagingly unorthodox narrative.” —Elle

From the Publisher

Billed as the first history of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Elizabeth Islands in 50 years, this animated if loosely organized book blends stories of the region's rich heritage with tales of the author's adventures kayaking the local current-riven waters. A Vineyard resident himself, Schneider begins by describing the culture of the area's Nauset and Wampanoag Indians, noting that they had 125 years of contact with adventurous Europeans before the Mayflower's Pilgrims clambered ashore in Provincetown Harbor in 1620. Schneider identifies the geological machinations of the last ice age, which engulfed the northern half of the continent and sculpted the cape, islands and shoals he clearly loves. He retells the tragedy of the whaleship Essex as he juggles his way through New England's whaling heyday. More contemporary topics--such as the current milieus of the various communities and the ecological ravages of DDT in the 1960s--also emerge and recede in an energetic whirl of information. But Schneider's method is more enthusiastic than rigorous, often clouding the chronology of events. Though his literary prose can be engaging, some readers may tire of his rambling. A history of place is especially prone to fragmentation, and this talented writer has allowed his book to succumb to that weakness. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly