The Pacific Ocean is twice the size of the Atlantic, and while humans have been traversing its current-driven maritime highways for thousands of years, its sheer scale proved an obstacle to early European imperial powers. Enter Lope Martin, a forgotten Afro-Portuguese ship pilot heretofore unheralded by historians.
In Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mari ... Show More
Mar 2025
Tom Lynch, "Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
People make sense of the world through stories, and stories about places inevitably shape how we treat, live on, and use those places. In Outback and Out West: The Settler Colonial Environmental Imaginary (U Nebraska Press, 2022), emeritus professor of English at the University o ... Show More
1h 4m
Today
William R. Handley, "Horizons of Catastrophe in the American West" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
Horizons of Catastrophe in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. William R. Handley contributes to discussions in the environmental humanities and western U.S. studies about how we read past cultural history in the light of our determined yet unknown futur ... Show More
44m 57s
Sep 8
Claudia Verhoeven, "Love and Terror: The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders" (Verso, 2026)
Love and Terror, The Helter Skelter History of the Manson Murders (Verso, 2026) is the most recent addition to the hundreds of books and films devoted to the killings committed by Charlie Manson’s followers in Los Angeles in August 1969. What is different about this work is that ... Show More
1h 4m
Jun 2022
From the Vault: Pacific Navigation, Part 2
The original discoverers of the Polynesian Islands traversed a vast ocean, bringing civilization to islands untouched by human activity. How did they do it? In this classic Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe discuss the sheer scale of the Pacific Ocean and environ ... Show More
39m 23s
Nov 2021
A Secret Mission to Cross the Pacific
December 1, 1564. Spanish vessels left a secret port in Mexico about two weeks ago. Their goal: to sail across the Pacific and back, charting a new route for international trade, and giving Spain an edge against its chief colonial rival, Portugal. But today, when a storm hits, th ... Show More
32m 5s
Jun 2022
From the Vault: Pacific Navigation, Part 1
The original discoverers of the Polynesian Islands traversed a vast ocean, bringing civilization to islands untouched by human activity. How did they do it? In this classic Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe discuss the sheer scale of the Pacific Ocean and environ ... Show More
42m 7s
Jul 2021
Ancient Pacific Navigation, Part 3
The original discoverers of the Polynesian Islands traversed a vast ocean, bringing civilization to islands untouched by human activity. How did they do it? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind three-parter, Robert and Joe discuss the sheer scale of the Pacific Ocean and environmental ... Show More
49m 16s
Jan 2024
Brandon Presser, "The Far Land: 200 Years of Murder, Mania and Mutiny in the South Pacific" (Icon Books, 2022)
In 1808, an American merchant ship happened upon an uncharted island in the South Pacific and unwittingly solved the biggest nautical mystery of the era: the whereabouts of a band of fugitives who, after seizing their vessel, had disappeared into the night with their Tahitian com ... Show More
45m 22s
May 2021
Ancient Polynesia: Pioneers of the Pacific
Despite sporadic food sources and the dangers of the deep sea, the remote islands of the Pacific Ocean have been home to Polynesians for more than a millennium. But what was life like for the first people to venture between Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island, to name a few? In ... Show More
31m 19s
Jan 2019
Andrew Lambert, "Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World" (Yale UP, 2018)
Andrew Lambert, Professor of Naval History at King’s College, London, author of eighteen books, and winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal—turns his attention in a book that historian Felipe Fernandez Armesto describes as full of ‘ambition’, ‘verve’ and at times ‘brilliance’ - ... Show More
1h 2m