"A lot of the things we have at home were once transported by ship. It's the job of the ship captain to load, transport, and deliver all those things. The ship sails overseas or rivers and canals to get cargo to the right place at the right time. The captain and the crew work and live on the ship to make this happen"--

A professional captain of traditional sailing ships who has spent thirty years at sea offers a sailor's-eye-view of the moving parts of our atmosphere, unveiling the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams, and the longer arc of our climate.

"In a quiet harbor in New England, a sea captain named Ellis is visited by a seagull. By the end of the week the seagull had retuned and was eating crackers out of the captain's hand. They continued their friendship the entire season and the next year in the spring the gull retuned. After four years of friendship, the wild seagull named Polly still visits. This unlikely story of a wild bird and a friendly sea captain reminds us how we are all connected"--...

"The biography of Robert Smalls, a slave steamboat wheelman who navigated past Confederate forts in South Carolina and became one of the Civil War's greatest heroes. Includes text from Seven Miles to Freedom and additional sidebars."--