Rating: 
Summary: gripping read
Review: I just wanted to respond to the other reviewer because the truth is, nobody knows what type of shark was responsible for the attacks, or even if there were two different sharks. This is my main problem with the book as well. Capuszzo obviously doesn't even entertain the idea that it may have been a bull shark (a reasonable theory), which is somewhat unfortunate. But it could have very well have been a white shark, and hell it's a lot more psychologically terrifying than a bull, so he went with it. I guess it's not that big of a deal, because once you get started on this book, you won't be able to put it down. It's expertly crafted and very well written, and the period details are fantastic. It's a very quick and easy read too; I was done in two nights. I especially liked the way he paralleled the life of the shark and the life of the first victim, and all the details leading up to their inevitable encounter. I'm a huge fan of Jaws, and I thought that made me think twice about swimming in the ocean... Well, I can honestly say this book did an even better job. I doubt I'll be in the water much at the beach this summer. That's not a bad thing either, it's the sign of a very effective book.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it if you are interested
Review: I liked this book because it had an interesting topic. I did not know about these shark attacks. I thought a lot of the extra added history in the book was boring. The book goes into a lot of detail about some of the characters, the hotels, the coast, the creek, and so on and so on. It made me feel like it was getting off topic. I liked how the author tried to write from the shark's perspective. If you like reading about sharks or strange incidents involving animals and humans then I think this book would be terrific to read.
If you are strictly looking for a book to read about facts and shark attacks then this book might not be the book for you.
Mostly the book had my attention but I did get frustrated with it since I thought it added too much detail in some cases.
Rating:
Summary: More Than Just a Gory Shark Tale
Review: I would have loved this book without any chilling shark attacks. Capuzzo does a wonderful job of bringing this period of American history alive, while at the same time providing great factual detail about one of the world's greatest and most interesting creatures.
Rating: 
Summary: Gripping and Relentlessly Fascinating
Review: In this exciting, fast paced and riveting story of (as the subtitle says) "The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916" you'll learn the true story of what started America's paranoia about sharks, and culminated in the movie "Jaws". Read how a single shark (the author supposes, after meticulous research) brought fear to the heart of thousands of bathers and vacationers along the Atlantic Shore almost 90 years ago. Actual newspaper clippings, reports from witnesses to the vicious attacks, testimonies from shark experts and local police chiefs add to the story and give it another element - this IS the truth, not fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Could have been told in half the number of pages
Review: It was 1916, the year before America entered World War I. The country was moving from the Victorian Era to the Edwardian. Americans found sharks scary, but believed them to be ultimately harmless to humans. WE GET IT ALREADY!! Creating a sense of the times was essential, but cultural details are offered at a ridiculous degree of redundancy. The look into the mind of the shark was very interesting, as was the contemporary look at shark attacks. The story is paced well, in that there are many moments where you hold your breath -- sometimes with reason, sometimes to be let out in relief. But the book would have been far better with a good editorial scrubbing.
Rating:
Summary: Great White
Review: It wasn't a great white shark, it was a bull shark.
Rating:
Summary: Too Many Nibbles and Not Enough Bite!
Review: Maybe it's just me, but I found this book to be extremely frusterating at times. Full of too much historical detail, which the author tells you in the beginning of the book is spot on journalism down to the dialogue of the participants, you have to wade through page after page and chapter after chapter of local color and scenery to find out what happened on the New Jersey shore in that fateful Summer of 1916. The writing style is conversational and more along the lines of a novel than an historical account, but the first shark attack doesn't show up until somewhere around page ninety at which point you are fed up with descriptions of seaside hotels and changing Victorian bathing suit hemlines and morbidly hope that the shark is about to chomp on somebody soon. There are also chapters from the shark's point of view which, while full of scientific detail of the animal, ring a little false as I'm pretty sure this shark never sat down for an interview as to his methods and motives. One of the author's nastiest tricks is to introduce you to a character in depth and detail from infancy all the way up to the point where they jump into the water for a long distance swim and then, just when you are sure that the prototype to Jaws will strike, they swim safely to shore and go for a coctail on the verenda. The shark attacks that do happen are presented in a gripping and suspensful fashion, but just know you will be wading through another fifty or so pages until the shark surfaces again. The whole account was just a tad too padded and repetative for my tastes. The book could have been half as long and twice as good.
Rating:
Summary: JAWES Inspiring!
Review: Michael Capuzzo has done a spectacular job of writing a truly entertaining as well as informative account of the 1916 New Jersey series of shark attacks. These attacks were used by author Peter Benchley to base his bestseller "Jaws" from. While a fan of both Jaws the book and movie both pale in comparison to Capuzzo's real-life account, this is honestly one of the best books I've read in quite some time. As for the other reviewers who complained about the "detail" used in the book these are obviously readers who were looking for strict blood, guts and schlock...for that type of reading stick to the tabloids, for an honest page-turning good read buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: A Tremendous Read
Review: Michael Capuzzo has done an outstanding job narrating the New Jersey shark attacks of 1916. He renders a powerful (if not absolutely conclusive) argument that the perpetrator was a great white, rather than a bull, shark. Moreover, he breathes new life into the old, and today largely discredited, theory of the rogue shark (and of rogue animals in general). This theory appears to be out of favor today primarily because of politically correct -- i.e., intellectually bankrupt -- reasons. And Mr. Capuzzo is clearly not one to be cowed by the intellectually bankrupt.Mr. Capuzzo does an equally terrific job recreating the historical period in which the attacks took place, and the reader waxes nostalgic. No period in history is perfect, but those were better days than these -- days that, save for a few remnants here and there, are long and sadly gone. Bravo, Mr. Capuzzo!
Rating:
Summary: Golden Lads & Lasses Also Come To Dust
Review: Michael Capuzzo's Close To Shore is a fairly gripping account of life along the eastern seaboard during the summer of 1916, when, presuming the facts as known are accurate, a single great white made the first fully documented shark attacks on swimmers in American waters. Moving freely through time, the ambitious Capuzzo provides his audience with a broad panorama of American life during the period from the late nineteenth century through the years following World War One. These were relatively optimistic decades in the life of the country, when "gusto, vitality... were the values of the young industrial republic already beginning to dominate the world" and being a man meant "discipline, self - denial, honor, and duty, strength in deeds and not in words." While Capuzzo paints a glorious picture of the idealism, confidence, social manners, and emblematic architecture of the era, he also depicts that world as one strikingly similar to our own: then as now, mankind is at the mercy of random forces, from man's own ignorance, superstition, and greed to sweeping urban diseases, war, and sudden, violent eruptions of nature. Thus Capuzzo's larger theme is the frailty, innocence, and ignorance of mankind in the face of the continuous onslaught of mercenary nature, whose often tranquil face can be insidiously deceptive. The events during the Independence Day holiday of 1916 were loaded with archetypal significance: two young, golden - boy athletes, one a popular figure at the glamorous seaside resort community where he was employed and the other a member of high society, took to the sea on different afternoons for playful, slightly arrogant displays of their prowess as long - distance swimmers. Then, in clear view of promenading guests on the boardwalks of "those Edwardian parlors by the sea," they were dismembered and devoured alive by something attacking from beneath the waves. Shortly after, the aberrant man - eater swam inland into Matawan Creek and there, on an idyllic small town summer day, found even younger and more innocence, carefree prey. Capuzzo provides extensive background profiles for the victims and their family members, the rescuers, and scientists that are the book's key players, thus allowing readers to grasp the tragedies in the larger framework of the individual's position in life, ambitions, hopes, and fears. This clever approach gives Close To Shore its sense of slowly rising power and drama. In a note at the beginning of the book, Capuzzo states that Close To Shore is a work of nonfiction. Though he has scrupulously researched his subject and the history of an entire epoch in all its details, there are no footnotes provided. There are also quite a few occasions in which Capuzzo places thoughts in the heads of the people he is writing about. While not a work of fiction, the book, as a re-creation of events rather than a strict account of the facts, straddles the line between fiction and nonfiction. Beneath Capuzzo's cool, clean prose, the author is fond of over - generalized ("the warming air disturbed the order of nature at all levels") or grandiose statements, such as his comment about the great white shark: "It is, quite simply, too dangerous for there to be more than a limited number of its kind." Too dangerous for whom, for what? What science, other than speculative science, supports this claim? Concerning the man - eater of 1916, Capuzzo writes, "In all encounters it was governed by a rule born inside it: Never start a fight you can't win." Capuzzo is referring to pure instinct but manages to suggest that the beast has both self - awareness and self - knowledge. Though the great white is only fifty feet away, Capuzzo refers to first victim Charles Vansant, who is accompanied by a seventy - five pound red retriever, as "the strongest swimmer in the water." Capuzzo also continuously refers to the shark's behavior in terms of Victor Coppleson's "rogue" theory (a chapter is titled "A Long - Range Cruising Rogue," and elsewhere Capuzzo writes, "what is known is that it became a rare 'rogue' member of its species - "eranged apex predator," and "the big fish that entered Matawan Creek was profoundly disturbed before it became trapped, already on a rare and fragile edge of violence, even for its species"), but later states, without further comment, "by the twenty - first century, Coppleson's theory [of rogue sharks] was widely dismissed by scientists." In "Under A Full Moon," Capuzzo writes, "nor would anyone have understood the pull of the hidden [waxing] moon like a trigger on the jaws of the shark." Although the short chapter is wholly dedicated to moon mythology, nothing explains the passage above. Capuzzo refers to "water" inexplicably as "the first human home." Is he referring to early life in the womb or the primordial ooze? Capuzzo is correct that the "huge manta rays" and "eight - hundred pound ocean sunfish" seen or caught off the Jersey coast are not "sea monsters" in the mythical sense. However, in terms of size, these creatures, along with some scientist's hypothesized "twenty - five or thirty foot" great white sharks and other ocean giants, certainly are sea monsters in the literal sense, which is close enough for most people. A sixty - foot giant squid can just as accurately be called a sea monster as an "enormous cephalopod" or any other designation given it by man. Mythical or natural, the effect of these creatures on man's sense of reality and imagination is the same. Overall, Close To Shore is a fascinating, crisply written, and intelligent book which beautifully evokes the period it describes. By alternating chapters between the shark's underwater journey and the lives of the victims to be, Capuzzo is very successful in creating a mesmerizing effect, making the book a pleasurable and educational page - turner. Readers may also want to seek out Richard Fernicola's 12 Days of Terror (2001), another book which addresses the same subject.
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