The Devastating Wake - by Mary Malloy (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Devastating Wake describes the environmental and social impacts of 13,000 voyages from New England to the Pacific Ocean in the nineteenth century. Four key resources extracted from islands and coastlines, and four introductions from New England ships--including diseases and Christianity--provide the framework for examining profound changes in populations and ecosystems within the globe's largest ocean basin.

About the Author

Mary Malloy is the author of four non-fiction works of maritime or ethnographic history and four novels. She has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Brown University, where her dissertation was on the maritime fur trade to the Northwest Coast and the collecting of artifacts for New England museums. She taught maritime and environmental history for twenty-five years at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, MA, and made several voyages to the north and south Pacific with college undergraduates. Mary taught Museum Studies at the Harvard Extension School for twelve years, winning the Petra Shattuck teaching award in 2010.