The Outlaw Sea

The open ocean</br>that vast expanse of international waters</br>spreads across three-fourths of the globe. it is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. and at a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, it is a place that remains radically free. with typically understated lyricism, william langewiesche explores this ocean world and the enterprises</br>licit and illicit</br>that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons. but its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems</br>shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews of the gargantuan ships, and the growth of two pathogens: a modern and sophisticated strain of piracy and its close cousin, the maritime form of the new stateless terrorism.this is the outlaw sea that langewiesche brings startlingly into view. the ocean is our world, he reminds us, and it is wild. from the new yorker for langewiesche, the ocean is still a frontier, a lawless domain where brute economics always trumps moral considerations. his overview ranges from a story of contemporary piracy off the coast of indonesia to a portrait of the ship-breaking yards of india, where workers die by the dozen. the centerpiece of his exploration is the sinking, in 1994, of the ferry estonia in the baltic sea, in which more than eight hundred and fifty people died. in harrowing detail, langewiesche describes the chaos-sons abandoning mothers, criminals robbing fellow-passengers amid the confusion-and then follows the botched investigation that ensued. he makes an eloquent case that the ocean's forgotten corners have become too dangerous to neglect: al qaeda has begun to use freighters to smuggle its members across international borders. copyright © 2005the new yorker review “astonishing . . . langeweische's narrative achieves an almost operatic grandeur . . . as [he] demonstrates time and time again in this brave, often electrifying book, [the sea] is a world that is both new and very old, and we ignore it at our own peril.” ―nathaniel philbrick, the new york times book review“the outlaw sea is impossible to put down.” ―people william langewiesche is the author of four previous books, including the national book critic’s circle award finalist american ground. he is currently the international correspondent for vanity fair.