Rating: 
Summary: Well told, but it's a story -- not a history
Review: This book is a wonderful example of a well-framed historical subject. It's not a history, though. Michael Capuzzo uses the 1916 shark attacks on the New Jersey coast as a lens through which to describe the America of that year. His pacing, the way he alternates between the shark and the people of the time, and his adroit use of primary sources all serve the book well. It's a fluid read... if only I trusted it."Close to Shore" is nonfiction in the sense that "The Perfect Storm" was nonfiction -- it's based on true events, and it's not really a novel, so where do you put it at the book store? It belongs in a category with television shows like "Walking with Dinosaurs" -- which presented dinosaurs in faux documentaries, speculating about an awful lot along the way. I loved "Dinosaurs," don't get me wrong. The problem is you're never sure with this kind of stuff where the established truths leave off and the speculation begins. Here, too, it's about 1916; you don't go into the exercise with as much skepticism about what we can possibly know about a stegosaurus. The glaring, enormous example of that problem in this book is: There's no way to know for sure that the shark -- or sharks -- responsible for the 1916 attacks was a great white, and there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. There's no way to know that it was an individual shark at all, to start with. More to the point, several obvious traits of the attacks, and especially the Matawan Creek attacks, fit the profile of bull shark attacks a whole lot better than they do the great white. Bull sharks, to mention the most obvious problem with the great white idea, routinely travel and can even live in fresh or brackish water like the water of Matawan Creek. People get attacked by them in circumstances like that, often in murky water. It's among the most common shark attacks. Great whites, by contrast, don't have the organ that lets bull sharks retain salinity in fresh water. They can't go there. It's not just that, though -- basically ALL the Matawan creek attack details point to bull sharks. The twisting style of the initial bite, the way the shark grabbed at feet and limbs and pulled, the apparent time it took with its first victim at the bottom of the creek, the murky water it struck in, the reported color of the shark itself -- all those things are characteristic of bull sharks. They just don't fit the great white profile. It's a huge reach to picture a great white doing anything like what this shark supposedly did. Richard Ellis, in his excellent Encyclopedia of the Sea, summarizes current opinion by saying most experts think these attacks were made by a bull shark (or sharks). In any case, as Capuzzo admits, the "rogue shark" idea has fallen into disfavor with scientists -- but the entire shark side of this story is predicated on that idea. Unfortunately, unlike a true history, Capuzzo's book can't stop and speculate: were the attacks on the shoreline by different sharks than the ones 11 miles inland? Was this a great white or a bull shark? More than one shark? Instead the author continues through the whole book describing the actual thoughts, leaving alone the movements and actions, of a single juvenile great white. He's using the shark as a sort of literary character, and he doesn't want to break character. That's what'll make you think of "Perfect Storm," in which we're given the actual thoughts of people who didn't return from the storm. How does the author know what they thought? Here we know what the shark is thinking. That's too far. What sharks in general might think would be okay. What this one particular shark felt as it was swept north on the warm waters of the gulf stream? That's a real reach. It detracts from the story. Where's that line between what he knows and what he's making up? Anyway, this is a very easy and entertaining read, and I'm not dying to puncture the balloon. The human side of the story is a lovely evocation of a gone time, and the subtitle of the book -- "A true story of terror in an age of innocence" -- only starts to do justice to that. It's just, when it comes does to it, I suspect the shark side is more "story" than "true."
Rating:
Summary: I Drowned in the Prose
Review: I enjoyed parts of this book...mostly the excitement of the shark attacks and their aftermath. But I thought the author drowned us in details and wrote in a very repetitous manner. I think an editor should have guided him better so that the book progressed in a more orderly fashion and did not go off onto so many tangents that gave us useless information. I also think that the characters should have been better developed so that the reader cared about them. As it was, there was more about Victorian values than about the people who died. It's a shame, because a lot of really really interesting information was buried in trivia. I ended up wishing that I had read an abridged version. I felt like this would have been a magazine-length article had the author not padded it with cultural information about the early 1900s. I agree with the reviewer who said that the author should have given us more background information on what was happening along the seacoast and in the ocean during that period, rather than writing about what was happening in Philadelphia. A disappointment because it could have been so good!
Rating: 
Summary: Gripping...
Review: Close to Shore held my attention like the shark held on to it's victims. As a fan of the original "Jaws", I had no idea that the movie was based on a true story. Capuzzo's detailed descriptions of life on the Jersey shore in 1916 were as fascinating as the in depth descriptions of the shark's thoughts as it moved through the waters seeking to satisfy it's appetite. I bought the book at the LA airport and had almost finished it by the time I arrived in San Antonio.
Rating: 
Summary: The Age of Innocence...........it was!
Review: It has been approximately a year since I read this book (so some details are faint), but I am still talking about it. As an avid shark (esp. great whites) enthusiast, any shark book is interesting to me. However, CLOSE TO SHORE brought together detail to create a setting, characters for a novel, and facts about the GREAT WHITE SHARK. With all of the Shark Weeks on the Discovery Channel, we are able to learn more and more about these amazing creatures. The information that people had in 1916 is a small fraction of what we know now. The perspective that Capuzzo used was to describe the reactions the people of this Victorian Age had - to go from tea, lace, and leizure to absolute terror had me gasping with each paragraph. It really opened my mind to what we, with "all of our knowledge" take for granted. We know these creatures exist and the dangers they can impose. Michael Capuzzo's description of history making news was absolutely artistic. Who would have known that on my birthday in 1916, the first ever recorded shark attack of the east coast took place? Great white sharks are thought to be rogues of the sea - but this one decided to take a trip through the Matawan River - nature has no boundaries. Such interesting facts teamed with an interesting storyline made for wonderful reading - on or off the beach (ha,ha).
P.S. Being so close to home,(I live 40 minutes from Long Beach Island) makes for an even more intriguing picture - this didn't happen in California or Australia; it happened at the very beach I frequent. (Knowing the history that was created there, I enjoy LBI even more, now.)
Rating:
Summary: A Bit Long for the Topic
Review: This book is as much a social and cultural history of the early 1900s as it is a story of a shark (or sharks) that terrified visitors to several New Jersey resorts in the summer of 1916. I thought that much of the information and background the author used to set the stage was interesting but sometimes it became ponderous. I think that 100 pages could easily have been cut from the final draft. I read it all, but I think this kind of detail would not appeal to most people wanting to read a book about shark attacks. I learned a lot from the book, about the times and about sharks. I was astounded that a shark made its way 17 miles inland, up the Mattawan Creek, where it killed two people. It was also interesting to read about what the people and scientists of the times knew (or did not know) about sharks.
Rating:
Summary: Easy read, not too scientific
Review: This book is great if you take it at face value - a historical book with just a big of fiction thrown in to flesh out the real details. It's not a scientific treatise on shark attacks so if you start to read it, expecting that, you will be disapointed it. It reads more like a soap opera at times, with richly detailed writing and build up in the storylines. The book is truly scary, in a 'Jaws' kind of way (remember how thousands of people refused to swim in the ocean after that movie came out?). It's a fairly quick read and would make for a relaxing read any place but the beach!
Rating:
Summary: More of a Social History than an Account of the Attacks
Review: Overall, I found the narrative a tad slow, with far too much attention paid to North American Victorian values. Although, it was important to set the stage to place the shark attacks in perspective, I felt that the narrative should have focused more on scientific knowledge of the day rather than social history. What did scientists and laypeople know of sharks? What were their false assumptions and how were they formed? Why didn't some people heed the advice to stay out of the water? As well, it seems that the shark or sharks in question may have been bull sharks and tigers, and not white sharks. So, the writer's descriptions concerning the life cycle of a white shark were mute. That being said, at times, the story was quite chilling, and the main characters were very rich in detail.
Rating:
Summary: Close To Shore Audio CD Review
Review: In depth accounts to period history of the early 1900's in New Jersey and the US in this summary of the lives of people that were affected by the shark attack of 1916. The author is clever in his method of bouncing from story to story to keep but never peak your interest in the storyline. Then he bounces back to the original story to pick up again.
Rating: 
Summary: Bloated
Review: Not a bad writer. However there's not enough material in this story that warrants a full length book. The shark stuff is engrossing and he does a good job of covering that aspect. The personal stories are just too lightweight. Not interesting. This should have been a magazine article and not a book.
Rating:
Summary: Dive in - this is a good one!
Review: I never would have thought such a factual, historical tale could be told in the fashion of a novel, and manage at the same time to keep the reader intrigued, interested, and dangerously fascinated. Author Michael Capuzzo has done an outstanding job of relating incidents of the first known shark attacks on the East Coast, while at the same time wrapping the historical data in such fascinating verbage that reading this book was an absolute pleasure. People and places along the New Jersey coastline come to life for us in this book, and even the shark attacks take on a life of their own. If only all history writers could write like this - no one would ever think history boring again! The story unfolds easily, and flows throughout until the end. I didn't yawn once.
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