Live Yankees:The Sewalls and Their Ships

摘要

Live Yankees: The Sewalls and Their Ships, by Maine historian W.H. Bunting, is a gem of a book. While it's a compilation of numerous stories, letters, and accounts of one of the most influential shipping families (and shipping towns) of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Bunting's arrangement and interpretation of this material results in a colorful tapestry of the realities of 19th-century American maritime commerce and society. Bunting had rich source material. The Sewall family papers are a treasure trove-an assemblage of documents now in the collection of the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath that span nearly two centuries. Thanks to the care of the Sewall family and the museum staff, the collections have been well preserved and archived but little used. Bunting's charge was to create a story that was "both readable and able to withstand scholarly scrutiny." He has succeeded.