Author(s): Tom Blass

General & World History

Like the Celtic and Nordic gods of the countries surrounding it, the North Sea has battered and bewildered, produced and provided, damaged and destroyed in equal measure. Its inclement weather and perilous tides have made it a playground and a proving ground, a nursery and a grave, an object of veneration and a mighty adversary. A sea like no other, it has shaped our modern world and yet remained the same ancient beast known to the earliest inhabitants of its shores.

In North Sea, journalist Tom Blass trawls the bottom and skims the waves of the North Sea, searching for all that glistens, enraptures, enrages, and appalls. He sets out to meet the men and women who have devoted their lives to uncovering its secrets, from marine biologists studying the North Sea's submerged landscapes to the world's leading expert on Doggerland.

Traveling by tram, ferry, and twelve-seater aircraft around the eclectic borderlands, Blass interviews local fishermen, ornithologists, and bomb-disposal experts, capturing the wild, war-torn history of the North Sea, as well as the ways in which humanity has ecologically transformed it through overfishing and the race for energy.

North Sea scatters light into the sea's cold and murky depths, exploring its wonders and its relationship with humanity--from drug gangs to the Schleswig Holstein question to the sea's new role as a headline-grabbing environmental battleground.