Around America: A Tour of Our Magnificent Coast Book

This slim, enjoyable book is similar to the best kind of evening news broadcast: short on depth, yet long on charm, and featuring enough compelling anecdotes and interesting facts to inspire further investigation. In Around America, legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite presents a historical tour of much of America's nearly 5,000 miles of coastline. From the helm of his sailboat Wyntje, he offers tales of shipwrecks, naval battles, and navigational near-misses, as well as such memorable quips as "If you are a sailor, it is not a good thing to have a rock named after you." He's obviously much more familiar with the northeastern coast than the other places he describes, but even his enthusiastic, if light, take on the western and gulf coasts makes for pleasant armchair navigating. He also paints a rich montage of the 1,245-mile Intracoastal Waterway stretching from Norfolk, Virginia, to Key West, Florida, in which he describes both the culture of the waterfront communities he passes and the deep historical significance of the region. In this engaging book, Cronkite proves that the water need not be deep to be teaming with life, and he offers an amusing anecdote, colorful character, or historical tidbit on nearly every page. At its core, Around America is a labor of love by a mariner in his twilight still happily searching for hidden American harbors. --Shawn Carkonen Read More