From the bestselling author of BLACK FLAGS, BLUE WATERS comes the story of the American whaleship Mentor, wrecked in 1832 on a remote reef in the western Pacific. With supplies dwindling, the 11 surviving crewmen face not only the miseries of shipwreck in unfamiliar territory but also the profound uncertainty of contact with the Indigenous people of the Micronesian archipelago of Palau, who within days approach the deserted men brandishing axes, clubs and spears. In this gripping saga of cultural collision, tribal wars and dashed hopes, award–winning historian Eric Jay Dolin vividly reconstructs the Mentor’s doomed voyage, the years of perilous captivity, and the delicate negotiations and fraught naval rescue mission that followed.

In LEFT FOR DEAD, Eric Jay Dolin tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their 18-month ordeal --- an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail.

The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character ---- above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In REBELS AT SEA, bestselling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory.

Hurricanes menace North America from June through November every year, each as powerful as 10,000 nuclear bombs. These megastorms will likely become more intense as the planet continues to warm, yet too often we treat them as local disasters and TV spectacles, unaware of how far-ranging their impact can be. As bestselling historian Eric Jay Dolin contends, we must look to our nation’s past if we hope to comprehend the consequences of the hurricanes of the future. With A FURIOUS SKY, Dolin has created a sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus’ New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria.

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, BLACK FLAGS, BLUE WATERS reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age” --- spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s --- when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them.

Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, BRILLIANT BEACONS traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system from its earliest days, highlighting the political, military and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation's hardscrabble coastlines. Beginning with "Boston Light," America's first lighthouse, Eric Jay Dolin shows how the story of America --- from colony to regional backwater, to fledgling nation, and eventually to global industrial power --- can be illustrated through its lighthouses.

Brilliantly illuminating one of the least-understood areas of American history, bestselling author Eric Jay Dolin now traces our fraught relationship with China back to its roots: the unforgiving 19th-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire.