There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea, wrote Joseph Conrad. And there is certainly nothing more integral to the development of the modern world. In The Sea: A Cultural History, John Mack considers those great expanses that both unite and divide us, and the ways in which human beings interact because of the sea, from navigation to colonization to trade. Much of the world s population lives on or near the cost, and as Mack explains, in a variety of ways, people actuallyinhabit the sea.

The Sea looks at the characteristics of...