Rating: 
Summary: A Frightening Look At A True Story
Review: Many reviews did not do justice to this book. It is true that the story was slow to unfold and some of the descriptions were overdone, but the author told the story of what happened in those twelve days with frightening clarity. More than once, I pictured myself attempting to escape an unescapable predator. I also saw myself trying to save one of the sharks many victims to no avail. I even spent hours pondering how I would convince a town that I was not mistaken when I saw a shark in the creek.If you have even a slight interest in shark attacks, this book is a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but slow
Review: Mr. Capuzzo gives a thorough accounting of the shark attacks and he should be commended for his historical research of the era as well as the events. However, this is not for the easily bored reader. A good hundred pages of book must be read before the first attack occurs and much narrative follows the last one. In between, few of the individuals involved are defined well enough to make their characters memorable. Perhaps fast-paced thrillers have spoiled the reader's attention span but I believe restructuring this book would have improved it.
Rating:
Summary: Really great
Review: This book is very well written. The author obviously did a lot of research and captures the time period's innocence. The fist part of the book mostly sets the scene of how niave people were about sharks and "evil things" in general. The rest of the novel describes the rouge shark attacks in very graphic details. Parts that I found especially good were about one person feeling hunted but not knowing why and a boy being scraped by the shark's sandpaper skin. Those details are terrifying. Yea, there's gore, but the unknown is much scarier. This book is very good, you can also see where Benchley got many ideas for Jaws.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow-Building Tension, Great Period Descriptions
Review: The suspense in "Close to Shore" built very slowly, but in the meantime the author gives a very detailed feel for life in the early 1900's. In light of the recent attacks in Virginia Beach and Avon, NC, the slow pace is tolerable since it is sustained by a sense of inevitable doom.
I thought the author tried a little too hard to put us inside the shark's mind during the period of the attacks. While it's easy to accept that newspaper accounts and personal journals gave accurate descriptions of the human mindset during that time, who can really say exactly what drove the shark. It calls for more speculation than is sometimes tolerable. Though it certainly makes for dramatic reading to portray the shark as "nature's serial killer," the reader is lead to ask if that isn't a milder version of the same sensationalism that pervaded the newspaper accounts in 1916.
Still, if you're looking for a historical version of "Jaws," you've come to the right place. Interesting to note that Peter Benchley, who authored "Jaws," is now one of the leading advocates for the great white shark as a misunderstood creature in desperate need of preservation.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite what it could have been...
Review: As a young boy I read the sensational and gruesome books of shark attack that were spawned by the phenomenal success of the movie Jaws. These true-life accounts graphically presented in lurid prose select case files for the readers titillation. Capuzzo gamely attempts to combine similar shark attack narration with a period piece of WWI-era America. The problem is it doesn't quite work. In the summer of 1916 a great white shark terrorized the beaches of New Jersey and New York killing three men, one boy, and maiming another. Capuzzo endeavors to bring his readers back to 1916 so that we can experience the time and it's terror for something not then understood. It's a worthy goal and something in which this reader was very eager to participate. But, time and again Capuzzo abruptly yanks the reader back to the future with modern day references and resources which spoil the "age of innocence" which was originally subject matter of enough importance to include in the title. One longs to remain immersed in the era to live the "terror" for what it was then. Instead, this treat is spoiled by Capuzzo's desire to clinically dissect what this "terror" no longer holds for us now. In short, he spoils the fun. As shark attack books go, Close to Shore is as good as any other I've read. My disappointment resides in the realization that this book could have been, in a historical sense, so much more.
Rating:
Summary: A true story of terror
Review: Michael Capuzzo's Close To Shore provides a true story of terror, with narrator Len Cariou's impassioned voice recounting the summer of 1916 when a lone white shark terrorized the New Jesey shore. Shades of Jaws, couched in reality. A fine drama.
Rating:
Summary: could have been great
Review: Like many other reviewers I was disappointed. Having grown up at the Jersey shore I knew the area of the attacks well. And I started reading the book the day a man was attacked by a shark in the Bahamas and finished it just as two more fatal shark attacks happened in North Carolina and Virginia. So talk about relevance. The chapters on the shark were pretty captivating . The alternate chapters on life in the early 1900's were mind-numbing and repetitive.
Tell us once that modesty at the beach was the rule. But don't repeat it in every other paragraph nor feel obligated to describe each bathing suit. . We got it the first time.
It got so that after the first 40 pages or so, I completely skipped over the non-shark chapters and lost very little .
Rating: 
Summary: Careless Writing and Editing Detract From This Book
Review: This book was recommended by a friend of mine and I'd spent my high school years in New Jersey not far from the shore. I expected to enjoy the Close to Shore. However, there were many inaccuracies and misstatements in it. These detracted very significantly from my enjoyment of the book. The author and editor both appear to have rushed the book to print with little time spent reviewing what had been written.
Rating:
Summary: A good summertime yarn...and it's true!
Review: This is an interesting and engaging step into history when going to the beach first became popular and it was widely believed that sharks were harmless. Somebody should have told the shark, who seemingly gets carried from its normal environment and becomes increasingly violent as it gets more and more disoriented. The attacks on humans at the seashore are horrifying, and the story builds to a climax as the shark moves up a creek far away from the ocean and homes in on boys splashing in the summer sun. I found this book to be in the same genre as "Isaac's Storm," in which we learn of the misconceptions of nature held by Americans at the time. A great read for the beach...and you'll be more careful about dipping a toe in the ocean!
Rating:
Summary: Gripping Tale
Review: The author tells a wonderful, frightening story of a killer shark prowling the Jersey Shore and even up the river to Matewan, where it killed two and maimed one. The author has a really good feel for the time period and the people. The amount of research that he must have done to paint such vivid pictures must have been huge. I only caught one minor error. William K. Vanderbilt was not Hermann Oelrichs' brother in law. Their wives were the leaders of society in Newport and New York with Mamie Fish, but not related. This is an incredibly fast read and I recommend it highly.
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