Rating: 
Summary: An Era is Captured
Review: As the title indicates, this book is about the laying of the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. Gordon relates this story well from the pie in the sky innocent dreaming of those who first promoted the idea, to the amateurish first attempts to finally, the professional successful laying of the cable. He is concise and interesting. The book is filled with contemporaneous quotes from pro-techies and and anti-techies of the time. I enjoyed the "big picture" better. Gordon relates well the era of the early industrial age when fortunes were seemingly made in minutes and Americans and Englishmen thought anything possible. He conveys to the reader the huge leaps and bounds made in technology during the first half of the nineteenth century and uses the laying of the Atlantic cable as not only a shining example of such advances, but also a crowning achievement of the age. The book is as readable a history as one will ever find. Gordon takes his subject, puts it in perspective and sprinkles the book with off-topic history that aids in the telling of his story.
Rating: 
Summary: A Breezy Historical Account
Review: At a brief 215 pages of double-spaced narrative, "A Thread Across the Ocean" as a book stands in sharp contracst to the Herculean feat it resurrects for modern readers. We have come to take instant communications so much for granted that we tend to forget that prior to a mere century-and-a-half ago, it took news many weeks to cross the world's great oceans. Though dwarfed in memory by such other mammoth engineering feats such as the Panama Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge, the laying of the first Trans-Atlantic cable in 1866 was every bit important in the delvelopment of the modern world, if not more so. Author John Steele Gordon tells the tale with easily readable prose and superb storytelling. Along the way, he enhances the historical memory of Cyrus Field, the visionary entreprenuer whose single-minded devotion to the project kept it going despit many setbacks. Field's project was the perfect marriage of private and public enterprize in an effort that greatly bennefitted both. Field's story is as interesting as that of the cable itself. The one main drawback to the book is that its brevity doesn't seem befitting of its subject matter, even more so since Gordon throws in a number of anecdotes that are sidelights to the main story. He commits a major factual error with one of the side stories, stating inaccurately that General Zachary Taylor led the American Army to Mexico City during the Mexican War when in fact it was General Winfield Scott who accomplished that task. Overall, despite a few flaws, "A Thread Across the Ocean" is a worthwhile read that will be of primary interest to history buffs.
Rating:
Summary: Atlantic Cable 1866 in Historical Context
Review: Betty: Why is the Atlantic cable story worth while?
Frank: We've forgotten how important the Atlantic cable was and what U.S. life was like in the 1850s and 60s. This book reminds us that Europe then dominated the world. Britain was its political and financial center. The U.S. was a far away backwater country separated from Europe by a wide and stormy North Atlantic.
Betty: It took weeks for letters, goods, and people to cross the Atlantic on a fast ship. Then amazingly on July 27, 1866, on the fifth attempt over a 12 year period, the Atlantic cable, spearheaded by U.S. businessman Cyrus West Field, instantly connected New York with London.
Frank: Author John Steele Gordon concluded that the Atlantic cable electrified people in 1866, changed history forever, helped make the U.S. a major player on the world scene, and created the beginning of the world as a global village.
Betty: This great 19th century engineering feat was an epic struggle costing millions, involving British and U.S. politicians, financiers, ships, sailors, technicians, and scientists.
Frank: The Atlantic cable was an early instance of international cooperation. It followed decades of U.S.-British angers over the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and frictionable Civil War incidents. The Atlantic cable had failures and disappointments but it finally ended in a history-changing victory.
Betty: Historians have compared the successful completion of the transatlantic cable, July 27, 1866, to the U.S. landing on the moon, July 1969, 103 years later. Frank, tell us: What U.S. and British national factors hastened the laying of the cable? What technical developments, inventions, and economic factors made the Atlantic cable possible?
Frank: Americans in the early 1800s were little better off than the ancient Greeks or Romans in travel time and in communications. Christopher Columbus took a month to reach the New World in 1492. The Mayflower took 23 days to cross the Atlantic in 1619. When the Atlantic cable was completed, the average ship using sail or steam still took several weeks to cross the Atlantic.
Betty: A century earlier the Industrial Revolution changed life by making goods and services faster and cheaper.
Frank: Weaving cloth, the basis of the British economy, was advanced by British inventor John Kay's flying shuttle and by the inventors of the spinning jenny and the water-driven power loom. Scotsman James Watt's steam engine increased textile factory output and improved the economy.
Betty: George Stevenson's steam locomotive the Rocket on the Manchester to Liverpool railway spread railroads.
Frank: The middle class grew. New wealthy factory owners, open to ideas, replaced landed gentry in influence. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, peace enabled Europe to turn its energies from war to commerce and industry.
Betty: In the U.S., Eli Whitney's cotton gin, a rotating drum with spikes, efficiently pulled cotton fiber from its seed. It made cotton king in the South. New York City, which became the U.S. financial center partly by financing cotton sales abroad, grew in wealth and power.
Frank: Understanding electricity, essential in developing the telegraph, was hastened by Benjamin Franklin's key hanging from a kite in a thunder storm.
Betty: Lightning from clouds to earth was recognized as the release of built-up differences in potential. Chemical batteries were developed that gave carbon a positive charge and zinc a negative charge.
Frank: A connecting copper wire caused an instant flow of electric current. England's Sir William Watson in 1747 proved that an electric current could travel a long distance along a wire.
Betty: On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse used a sending key to make and break an electric circuit. This start and stop of electric flow at the receiving end, which had a highly coiled wire, made it an electromagnet which attracted and repelled a piece of metal, producing a click-clack sound.
Frank: The Morse code: dot-dash (or dit-dahhh) for A; dahh, dit dit dit for B, dit dit dit dahh for V, and so on, made telegraph messages possible. Morse's first message on the telegraph wire between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., was: "What Hath God Wrought?"
Betty: Another change: Canals replaced slow and costly hauling of mid-west farm products over the Allegheny Mountains to eastern markets. The Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie and the Hudson River at Albany gave cheaper, faster access along the Hudson River to New York City.
Frank: Between 1800 and 1860 the amount of U.S. commerce passing through New York City rose from only 9% to 62%. New York City became the biggest boom city in the world. In 1835, on the upswing of that boom, 16-year-old Cyrus West Field left his native Stockbridge, Mass., to seek his fortune in New York City.
Betty: Unlike his seven older brothers who attended Williams College, Cyrus Field persuaded his Congregational minister father to let him seek work in New York City. There a brother arranged his apprenticeship in A. T. Stewart's dry goods department store, the biggest in New York City, which later became John Wanamaker's.
Frank: After his apprenticeship at A.T. Stewart's department store, Cyrus W. Field joined his brother Matthew Field, a partner in a Massachusetts paper mill. From bookkeeper, Cyrus became a leading salesman of paper supplies in New York state and throughout New England.
Betty: Field then became a junior partner in E. Root & Co., a New York City paper wholesaler. That firm failed after the Panic of 1837. Field acquired its paper stock. Although not himself liable, he settled the firm's debts at 30 cents on the dollar. His own firm, Cyrus W. Field and Co., became the leading U.S. wholesaler of paper and printing supplies.
Frank: Wealthy, living in New York City's fashionable Gramercy Park, Field soon paid all of E. Root & Co.'s debts, although not obligated to do so. The golden reputation he earned enabled him later to raise millions from investors for the Atlantic cable.
Betty: Still in his 30s, Field gave the management of his own firm to others and looked for new worlds to conquer. In November 1853, his brother Matthew introduced him to a Canadian engineer Frederick Gisborne. That meeting changed Field's life.
Frank: Canadian Frederick Gisborne, a self-taught engineer, headed the Nova Scotia Telegraph Co. Nova Scotia, with its main city of Halifax, is a Canadian peninsula in the Atlantic, northeast of Portland, Maine. To Nova Scotia's northeast is Newfoundland, fourth largest island in the world. Its main city, St. John's, is North America's nearest point to Ireland, England, and Europe.
Betty: Gisborne was trying to build a telegraph line from St. John's, southwest to Cape Ray, Newfoundland, there to connect through a submerged cable under Cabot Strait in the Atlantic to Cape Breton Island; and continuing into Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was already connected by telegraph lines to Portland, Maine, Boston, and New York. Gisborne, out of money, his cable incomplete, was bankrupt.
Frank: Field asked: Why are you trying to build your telegraph line from St. John's to Nova Scotia? Gisborne replied: So that ships carrying news from Europe landing at St. John's can telegraph that news to New York City, saving a day or two.
Betty: Cyrus Field was not impressed. For European news to reach New York one or two days earlier was not worth his time or trouble. Later, at home, looking at his world globe, Field realized that to send an almost instant telegraph message by a cable submerged in the Atlantic Ocean between Ireland and Newfoundland and then to New York, would be worthwhile and could be profitable.
Frank: November 9, 1853, the day after talking to Gisborne, Field wrote Samuel F. B. Morse to ask if an Atlantic cable was a practical possibility. Yes, answered Morse. He had experimented with an underwater telegraph line in New York harbor in 1843 and was confident it could be done. Morse offered to help.
Betty: Field also wrote to Lt. Matthew F. Maury, head of the U.S. Navy Charts and Instruments and an expert on ocean winds and currents. Lt. Maury replied that the U.S. Navy had just completed a survey of winds and currents and made depth soundings in the most traveled U.S. to Europe shipping lanes. Maury ended: "�between Newfoundland�and Ireland the practicality of a submarine telegraph across the Atlantic is proved."
Frank: Needing capital Cyrus Field turned to his Gramercy Park neighbor Peter Cooper. Cooper had made a fortune in a glue factory and then built the first locomotive for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Cooper was then organizing Cooper Union, a tuition-free night technical school for working adults. Field's cable plan stirred Cooper's yearning to serve mankind.
Betty: To Cooper, Field's Atlantic cable idea fulfilled the prophecy that "knowledge shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the deep." Cooper told Field: you find other investors and I will support you.
Frank: Field persuaded three wealthy men to become investors: 1-Moses Taylor, controller of New York City's gas lighting industry; 2-Chandler White, who made a fortune in the paper business; and 3-Marshall O. Roberts, a major ship owner.
Betty: The investors, with Frederick Gisborne, Samuel F.B. Morse, and Cyrus Field's attorney brother, pored over maps and charts. They absorbed Gisborne's telegraph company into their newly formed New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Co.
Frank: The Newfoundland government hoped for economic benefit. It granted the new company a 50 year charter and some financial aid. On May 8, 1854, Peter Cooper became president, Cyrus Field was chief operating officer, and other officers were named. They committed themselves to raise $1.5 million, a huge sum then, but as problems mounted, not nearly enough. Cyrus Field wrote 14 years later: "God knows that none of us were aware of what we had undertaken to accomplish."
Betty: In early 1855 brother Matthew Field supervised 600 workers completing the telegraph line across southern Newfoundland. Cyrus Field went to England for advice about the cable. He spoke to John Watkins Brett, expert in submarine telegraphy who, with his brother Jacob Brett, had in 1851 successfully laid a 22 mile telegraph cable under the English Channel between Dover and Calais, France.
Frank: John W. Brett suggested a cable of three twisted copper wires, each covered with a new insulator, called gutta-percha. Bundled together, the wires were wrapped in tarred hemp, covered with another layer of gutta-percha, and the whole sheathed in galvanized iron wire.
Betty: Gutta-percha came from trees grown in Malaysia. Unlike rubber, gutta-percha did not break down in cold salt ocean water but hardened, yet was supple enough, a perfect insulator.
Frank: The cable, made in England, was placed on the steamship Sarah L. Bryant. which headed across the Atlantic to lay the cable under the Cabot Strait, south of Newfoundland.
Betty: In Canada Field chartered the James Adgar to tow the Sarah L. Bryant across the Cabot Strait as it laid the cable. Field entertained aboard the Sarah L. Bryant the Peter Coopers, the Samuel Morses, Field's two daughters, and two nationally known clergymen. Buffeted by storms and distracted by the partying guests, the towing ship's Captain Turner rammed the Bryant.
Frank: The cable kinked and to prevent its weight already in the water from dragging the Bryant under, the cable was cut and lost.
Betty: It was a painful lesson. The delicate maneuver to be learned was how to coordinate cable laying speed and braking mechanism with cable weight, ship's speed, wind gusts, weather changes, and shifts in currents. It had to be learned by experience again and again.
Frank: Failure to lay a cable under the Cabot Strait in August 1855 was a $351,000 loss. The cable was finally laid under the Cabot Strait in late 1856 and the telegraph line completed from Newfoundland to New York City, about 1,000 miles. Total cost, $500,000, a third of the firm's capital. Field returned to London in 1856 to raise more money.
Betty: The British government, wanting rapid communication with its far-flung empire, backed Field with cable laying ships and a _14,000 annual subsidy (that was $70,000 a year).
Frank: This subsidy gave British government messages priority over private messages. The exception was--U.S. government priority over British government, if U.S. support matched Britain's support.
Betty: Encouraged, Field, in London, formed the Atlantic Telegraph Co. (October 1856) and sold shares worth _350,000 (that was $l.75 million).
Frank: The U.S. Congress hesitated to match Britain's offer. Some members doubted that the cable would work. Others said that the rich cable backers should pay their own way. Others were traditionally anti-British. The Senate passed the needed legislation by one vote, the House by a few more. Pres. Franklin Pierce signed the aid bill on March 3, 1857.
Betty: Atlantic Ocean soundings made by a U.S. and a British ship determined the best cable route.
Frank: Added to the team were British chief engineer Charles T. Bright, who chose Valentia Bay, Ireland, as the best cable connection port.
Betty: Also added as advisor was Glasgow University Professor William Thomson. William Thomson, described by later historians as half Albert Einstein-half Thomas Edison, invented the galvanometer, which precisely measured electric current variations in the cable.
Frank: No single ship at the time was big enough to carry the new, thicker, heavier 2,500 mile long cable. In July 1857 the cable was divided between the USS Niagara and the HMS Agamemnon. Samuel F.B. Morse's plan was followed: both ships to start from Ireland, one laying its cable, a splice made in mid-Atlantic, with the other ship laying its part of the cable to Newfoundland.
Betty: Both ships set out from Ireland, each loaded with the 1,250 mile long carefully coiled cable. August 6, 1857: the cable was caught in the braking machinery. It broke. It was spliced. And the brake speed was adjusted.
Frank: August 8, 1857: 85 miles of cable was laid. August 10: the electric signal in the cable faded, was revived, and the cable, after being laid 400 miles, broke and sank. The first Atlantic cable attempt of 1857 had failed.
Betty; Cyrus Field returned to a New York City hard hit by the financial Panic of 1857. His own paper firm was in debt. Always optimistic, Field went to Washington, D.C., and got the U.S. Navy to lend him the USS Niagara and the USS Susquehanna.
Frank: The Navy also assigned him the Niagara's engineer William Everett as the Atlantic Cable Co.'s chief engineer. Engineer Everett built more efficient cable laying and braking systems. Glasgow University's Professor Thomson built a more efficient marine galvanometer to measure cable electric currents more precisely.
Betty: Spring and summer 1858: Second cable laying attempt. Engineer Charles Bright's plan was followed: one ship laid cable from Ireland, the other from Newfoundland. They were to meet and splice their ends of cable together. June 13, 1858: As the two ships approached each other, the worst North Atlantic storm in memory buffeted them mercilessly.
Frank: Coal bins on deck broke loose. Coal dust, mist, fog, and mountainous waves caused a cable break; 45 seamen were in sick bay, some with broken bones. The second cable laying attempt of 1858 had failed.
Betty: In London, gloomy and defeated, the Atlantic Cable Co. chairman and vice chairman resigned. They advised their fellow board members to sell all assets and liquidate the company. Staggered, Field used all of his persuasive powers to hold the remaining board members. True, he told them, 300 miles of cable had been lost. But there is still enough cable on the ships to complete the job. Let us try again.
Frank: Try again they did in 1858, with short-lived success. The cable worked for two weeks. Some 400 messages were exchanged. The signal then disappeared. Elatio
Rating:
Summary: A case study in industrial development
Review: Gordon has written an easily-read book about the laying of the first Transatlantic cable. He has done so by concentrating on the people involved and the times they lived in, rather than the technology - although that is well enough explained that as a reader you feel you "understand" what the determined group of men trying to lay the cable was up against. As an industrial project developer myself I found it a fascinating story. It would make a great case study of how NOT to go about a project. The first attempt to lay the cable was based on sheer enthusiasm and little else. Slowly, the approach became more professional until at the start of the final attempt I was thinking: "If they can't do it now, it could not be done." On the other hand, I had to admit that anybody trying a similar "leap of faith" commercialisation of a new technology in this day and age would in all likelihood not have been allowed a second try at it, let alone a third. I certainly recommend this book. Apart from the fact that it is well written and lucid, I think it is important that people understand the difficulties that developers face in bringing new technology to commercial use. If you think this was hard, just imagine what a poor so-and-so has to go through nowadays to get permission to, say, set up a renewable energy power plant - even though most of us want the product (but not made in our backyards...)
Rating: 
Summary: Readable but Shallow History with a Bias
Review: I found _A Thread Across the Ocean_ to be a perfectly readable account of the travails behind the laying of the first workable translatlantic cable, a breezy read without a lot of depth. If that's what you're looking for, this will do just fine.
What I found lacking, however, in this account was much in the way of depth or even a modern re-interpretation of the enterprise. Mr. Gordon writes with the bias of an economic reporter who was looking for some parallels to the great telecommunications ventures of our time -- the internet and cellular phone networks -- and not with the attention or insights of an historian. All of the sources used for the book are secondary, and two books written by the sons of "CEO" of the cable venture, Cyrus Field, and its chief engineer, Charles Bright, are heavily quoted throughout. There is little to no indication that the author delved more deeply into any of the numerous fascinating aspects of this epic undertaking -- the complicated business arrangements, the engineering details, the inner lives of most of the principals, and so forth. That the focus of the book remains squarely on Field, and not on the group, demonstrates the author's take on the subject as the story of a Great Man -- surely not a modern understanding of the technological and corporate complexity that emerged in the 19th century. There's certainly a wealth of untapped information in these areas that a more scholarly effort might make something more of.
This lack of attention to details gets a bit annoying. The example of the first sentence of the book, an 18th century American who dedicates a pew in the reign of George II because the news of his death hasn't reached the colonies, seems isolated and is left hanging with no real apparent purpose. Field's own lack of technical understanding of the enterprise which he headed is glossed over, as is the similar history concerning SFB Morse's own perfection of the telegraph itself. With the profusion of other telegraphic cables around the world, one gets little sense as to whether Field, et alia, were racing competitively to be the first, to establish a monopoly, or were regarded as daydreaming fools. Similarly, the almost randomized selection of anecdotal footnotes are often indistinghuishable from non sequiters wthin the text itself. It reads at times like Grandpa Simpson digressing around a story.
The overall effect is that one is reading an extended article in a business journal or an airline magazine, not a popular history.
The story is inherently fascinating, enough so that the faults of the book did not prevent me from reading voraciously throught to the end, but I was left wit the feeling that a better book on the subject is out there unwritten as yet. As it is, there's a decent retelling of parts of the story in the Kenneth Silverman book on Morse, _Lightning Man._
Rating:
Summary: Suprisingly fascinating!
Review: In 1853, entrepreneur Cyrus Field was introduced to Frederick Gisbourne, a man whose idea of laying a telegraph cable across the Atlantic, from Ireland to Newfoundland, had collapsed. Realizing the potential in such an undertaking, Field set up a corporation, and with unflagging energy he set out to make the transatlantic cable a reality. The New York Herald hailed the undertaking as, 'the grandest work which has ever been attempted by the genius and enterprise of man.' The project captured the imagination of the United States and United Kingdom, but few could foresee the trouble and hardships that the project would encounter. I must admit that my wife gave me a strange look when I showed her this book. How could a book about a cable be interesting? Well, the fact is that author John Steele Gordon succeeds at making the story absolutely fascinating! After a rather confusing first chapter, the book launches into the story of the Atlantic Cable, the men who built it, and the society in which it appeared. The author succeeds in grabbing your imagination, making you turn page after page, dying to see what happens next. I really enjoyed this book, and recommend it to everyone!
Rating:
Summary: Tycoons and Inventors Start a Global Village
Review: In these days of instant communication, when one can send an e-mail quickly and reliably to any part of the world, it might seem unnecessary to examine the laying of telegraph cables between Europe and America. But the delightful book, _A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable_ (Walker) by John Steele Gordon, gives a lively history of an epochal achievement which was only eventually a success despite costly failures, calamities, and mistakes. It is good to be reminded of just how difficult this beginning of our communications technology was to achieve, for as the title mentions, the story is indeed heroic. The hero is Cyrus Field, a man of enthusiasm, determination, and optimism who would not let his cable idea die. The appeal of the story is eventual success despite many heartbreaking failures, but as Gordon demonstrates, the failures were mined for lessons learned, and each subsequent attempt to lay the cable was a bit cleverer, a bit more comprehensive. There were broken cables, unexpected storms, and suspicion of sabotage in the different attempts. The public was wild with optimism and then wild with mockery when the cables failed. One laid in 1858 actually worked to send a message from Queen Victoria, but slowly, and then went forever dead. The final success in 1866 came in large part because of the gigantic ship _Great Eastern_, the final project of the brilliant engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The huge ship was a bit of a white elephant, but was the only vessel capable of carrying all that cable almost three thousand miles at 3,575 pounds per mile. The coiling it into different levels of the great ship without kinks was an engineering feat in itself. The ship also took advantage of the perfected paying-out machinery and brake, developed by a wealthy amateur tinkerer, a device so successful that it is still used in laying cable today. There is no real suspense to this story, of course; Gordon has, however, written an exciting tribute to Field, the other entrepreneurs, and the technicians who put an exceedingly difficult project into action. The cable, after many attempts, many years, and many dollars, worked and became indispensable. Two weeks after the cable was open for business, for instance, the market quotations in New York and London became equalized, as they could act together. The _Great Eastern_ went on to lay five other cables, and by 1900 there were fifteen, with competition between the firms that ran them. Wireless telegraphy, radio, and satellite communication have not made the cables obsolete; most transoceanic communication is still by reliable strands of wire, or of fiber-optics, beneath the sea. _A Thread Across the Ocean_ vividly tells an important and overlooked story of perseverance and triumph.
Rating: 
Summary: A "Thin" Cable
Review: Interesting subject, but not a well-told. Given the book's short length, about 220 pages, he devotes a surprising amount of the book to backgrounding. In a book of this length, you really have to cut to the chase. For instance, we get 20 pages, or a little less than 10% of the book, describing the history of the Great Eastern, the massive ship that finally laid the cable. And a number of pages devoted to the family of Cyrus Field, the man who came up with the whole idea. Why? Not every fact, newpaper article, and speech that a researcher finds is relevant. Needs focus.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyed the read, wished for more
Review: It was a lot of fun to read Gordon's narrative. My only complaint was the brevity of it all, but that's the problem with a page-turner, they are over too quickly. The story is retold in terms that might remind you of the 'moon program'. A non-techie evangelist's son gets caught up in an impossible dream, but find the people that can do the job and succeeds. It is a bit too simple, but works. Like JFK, our hero Cyrus Field refuses to give up. As in 'The Right Stuff', we wade through one disaster after another, all the while waiting for victory to yield her treasures. The biographical pictures of various inventors, quacks and robber-barons ought to fascinate any but the die hard soap-opera fan. Sorry, the only marital issues I noticed were questions about how our heroic men stayed married while obsessed with this project. In very un-politically correct style, there isn't a single woman mentioned in a non-supportive spousal role. Despite my enjoyment, I wish the book had been about 4 times longer. There was little real detail regarding the competition, science, inventions or economics. There is another page-turner available, 'Signal & Noise: A Novel by John Griesemer. It covers exactly the same territory, with more character development and female roles. Otherwise, there isn't much more than material published by the participants. The Atlantic telegraph (1865) by William Howard Russell; The story of the Atlantic Telegraph by Henry M. Field and Submarine Telegraphs: Their History, Construction and Working by Charles Bright. All three are long out of press.
Rating:
Summary: A little niche of history that changed the world
Review: It's hard to imagine how different life was for people living in the 19th century after the successful laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable. This book tells the story of the laying of that cable and at the same time paints a portrait of Cyrus Field, the entreprenuer who laid the cable, and a period of time when so much about life was changing for inhabitants of the western world. Perhaps no other invention shrunk the world as quickly and as meaningfully as the trans-Atlantic cable.
John Steele Gordon always manages to imbue his writing of history with color and character that draws the reader into the story and keeps the pages turning quickly and easily; "Thread Across the Ocean" is no exception. This is a book for anyone who enjoys well-written history.
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