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The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas
Award-winning nature author Jerry Dennis reveals the splendor and beauty of North America’s Great Lakes in this “masterwork”* history and memoir of the essential environmental and economical region shared by the United States and Canada.No bodies of water compare to the Great Lakes. Superior is the largest lake on earth, and together all five contain a fifth of the world’s supply of standing fresh water. Their ten thousand miles of shoreline border eight states and a Canadian province and are longer than the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. Their surface area of 95,000 square miles is greater than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island combined. People who have never visited them—who have never seen a squall roar across Superior or the horizon stretch unbroken across Michigan or Huron—have no idea how big they are. They are so vast that they dominate much of the geography, climate, and history of North America, affecting the lives of tens of millions of people.The Living Great Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas is the definitive book about the history, nature, and science of these remarkable lakes at the heart of North America. From the geological forces that formed them and the industrial atrocities that nearly destroyed them, to the greatest environmental success stories of our time, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are portrayed in all their complexity.A Michigan native, Jerry Dennis also shares his memories of a lifetime on or near the lakes, including a six-week voyage as a crewmember on a tallmasted schooner. On his travels, he collected more stories of the lakes through the eyes of biologists, fishermen, sailors, and others he befriended while hiking the area’s beaches and islands.Through storms and fog, on remote shores and city waterfronts, Dennis explores the five Great Lakes in all seasons and moods and discovers that they and their connecting waters—including the Erie Canal, the Hudson River, and the East Coast from New York to Maine—offer a surprising and bountiful view of America. The result is a meditation on nature and our place in the world, a discussion and cautionary tale about the future of water resources, and a celebration of a place that is both fragile and robust, diverse, rich in history and wildlife, often misunderstood, and worthy of our attention.“This is history at its best and adventure richly described.”—*Doug Stanton, author of In Harm’s The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors and 12 The Declassified True Story of the Horse SoldiersSigurd Olson Nature Writing Award WinnerWinner of Best Book of 2003 by the Outdoor Writers Association of America
338 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2003
199 people are currently reading
2825 people want to read
About the author
Jerry Dennis
41 books47 followersJerry Dennis was born in Flint in 1954, and grew up in rural northern Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Louisville in 1981, after attending Northern Michigan University and Northwestern Michigan College.
As he began his writing career, he worked as a carpenter for five years. To date, he has written for many publications. Journalistic assignments sent him to Iceland, Chile, and extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Dennis married during this time to Gail. They currently live on the shores of Lake Michigan, not far from Traverse City.
Since 2000 he has been on the faculty of the University of Michigan's Bear River Writers Conference, where he teaches creative non-fiction and nature writing.
As of 2014, he is the author of ten books, his best known book is The Living Great Lakes, about his trip around the great lakes in a rickety ship. He was awarded a place on the Michigan Notable Books list for that book.
In 2014, in response to a pricing dispute between his publisher, MacMillan Press, and Amazon, Dennis set up his own publishing house, Big Maple Press, to produce books which will be sold only through independent booksellers.
His awards include: 2004 Michigan Notable Books, 2004 Sigurd Olsen Nature Writing Award, 2004 Great Lakes Culture Best Book Award Non-Fiction, 2004 The Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Award for Literature,
2003 Alumni Fellows Award, University of Louisville, College of Arts and Sciences,
1999 Michigan Author of the Year,
1993, 1996, 1998, and 2003 Best Book of the Year awarded by Outdoor Writers Association of America.
As he began his writing career, he worked as a carpenter for five years. To date, he has written for many publications. Journalistic assignments sent him to Iceland, Chile, and extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Dennis married during this time to Gail. They currently live on the shores of Lake Michigan, not far from Traverse City.
Since 2000 he has been on the faculty of the University of Michigan's Bear River Writers Conference, where he teaches creative non-fiction and nature writing.
As of 2014, he is the author of ten books, his best known book is The Living Great Lakes, about his trip around the great lakes in a rickety ship. He was awarded a place on the Michigan Notable Books list for that book.
In 2014, in response to a pricing dispute between his publisher, MacMillan Press, and Amazon, Dennis set up his own publishing house, Big Maple Press, to produce books which will be sold only through independent booksellers.
His awards include: 2004 Michigan Notable Books, 2004 Sigurd Olsen Nature Writing Award, 2004 Great Lakes Culture Best Book Award Non-Fiction, 2004 The Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Award for Literature,
2003 Alumni Fellows Award, University of Louisville, College of Arts and Sciences,
1999 Michigan Author of the Year,
1993, 1996, 1998, and 2003 Best Book of the Year awarded by Outdoor Writers Association of America.
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April 11, 2021
“The wind grew stronger by the moment. It shifted, backing from south to east. Thirty seconds later, it swung to the north. The changes were abrupt and alarming, and each brought increased velocity. The new wind blew the tops off the waves, raising a horizontal spray that raced us downwind. Waves became confused, running south and north at the same time, slamming together and clapping spouts that the wind stripped away in banners. [The schooner] Malabar jumped like she’d been jabbed. We went from six knots to eight, with nothing catching the wind but the bare sticks and the poop deck. But we couldn’t go fast enough to keep ahead of the storm. The black lid closed over us…”
- Jerry Dennis, The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas
This is a tall order.
To capture the very essence of the Great Lakes, five of the most impressive bodies of freshwater on earth.
It is quite an essence.
Some of my most unforgettable childhood memories come from a trip around the Lakes, starting in Duluth and ending at Niagara Falls. I’ve forgotten a billion things since then, but I still recall the first time I climbed over a grassy berm and saw Superior stretching out before me; the bags full of agates I collected; the cold spray of waves crashing against a breakwater; the wink of a lighthouse at dusk; the long, low silhouettes of bulk freighters as they journeyed across the horizon.
It is trite and corny to say, but Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are magical. They not only create their own weather; they weave their own spells. They are massive, yet contained. They are havens for recreation, yet can turn deadly in an instant. You can thrill to a pleasure cruise, yet know that beneath the keel of your boat, there are thousands of shipwrecks. To stand on the shores of the Great Lakes is to be caught in a mist of history, lore, and legend. The story of the Great Lakes is a story of exploration, scientific ingenuity, commerce, and feats of engineering. It is also the story of greed, shortsightedness, and of vessels – from birchbark canoes to the Edmund Fitzgerald – swallowed whole.
Like I said, trying to wrap your arms around this is a tall order. Yet Jerry Dennis accomplishes the feat in The Living Great Lakes.
The idea underlying this book is simplicity itself. Dennis, an outdoor journalist with strong regional ties, talks himself aboard the refurbished schooner Malabar, which must be sailed from Lake Michigan to Maine. As the ship makes her way across Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario (and the locks and rivers in between), Dennis intercuts the present-day journey (seamanship, storms, personality clashes, and a clogged sewage system!) with digressions on geology, marine biology, history, tourism, and the environment. He regales you with stories of lost liners; with the Lakes’ unique weather patterns; with the construction of the systems of locks that allow ships to follow water uphill. There is talk of fishing, navigation, and of the intricate ecosystems that are regularly thrown out of balance.
Dennis is forced to cut away from the Malabar on occasion, especially since the schooner’s route did not touch Lake Superior. When he does veer away, however, he manages to maintain momentum by finding a nice narrative arc to follow. For instance, he covers the vastness of Superior by tethering himself to a canoe trip along the shore.
(Side note: This was published in 2003. The Malabar’s trip took place over roughly a month in 2000. Thus, The Living Great Lakes takes place in a kinder, gentler world, a world where the Cold War had ended, the Towers still stood, and there were no wars in faraway countries. This helps ratchet the nostalgia factor up to eleven, but does nothing to detract from what Dennis has to say, especially with regards to the environmental conditions of the Great Lakes. A fifth of the earth’s surface freshwater is contained within them, and they need to be protected. That was true then. It is just as true now).
A book like this resembles a guided tour. As such, it lives or dies by how much you like the guide. Dennis comes across as a curious, amiable, and up-for-anything kind of guy. He is perceptive about people, and does a great job of drawing out the stories of the men and women he meets. While he often reflects on his own experiences, he doesn’t come across as overly pompous or navel gazing. His humor is mostly of the unobtrusive, dad-joke variety, and if he has a tendency to name-drop folks I’ve never heard of, and to quote from a hoary cast of literary luminaries, such things are easily forgiven. It is also worth mentioning that Dennis is a legit journalist, with a journalist’s nose for a story. On one occasion, this allows him to crash a memorial service for the dead of the Fitzgerald. He even provides annotated endnotes, in case you are looking for further reading.
Most important of all, Dennis can flat out write. He is a natural storyteller, with an excellent sense of pacing, a good eye for the well-constructed scene, and facility for evocative detail. There is, for instance, a haunting flashback to 1967, when Dennis was a child growing up on the banks of Lake Michigan. His family had intended to go out fishing, but a squall kept them ashore. Hundreds of others went out, unfortunately, and were swamped by heavy waters. Most were rescued. Some were not. Dennis vividly describes being on the shore and watching two men drown just a hundred feet from safety.
Dennis closes The Living Great Lakes with a plea to protect them. From invasive species. From pollution. From rapacious Arizonans who are slowly coming to realize they built their golfing empires in a desert. This is all to the good. For as Dennis aptly demonstrates, these lakes are a treasure for humanity; they don’t belong to the richest corporate entity with the biggest pipeline.
But that’s just stuff to get the blood riled. The Living Great Lakes works best when it is soothing. When it lets you turn your face toward the sun and feel the breeze against your cheeks, the sails ruffling overhead.
Towards the end, Dennis has left the Malabar and is headed back home. He conjures an all-too-familiar scene:
It’s a description of modern life that has only intensified since this book’s publication. In the midst of this maddening buzz of toxic politics, ear-splitting social media intrusions, and the relentless commodification of everything in daily life, it is more important than ever to get away, to some simpler place.
A place like the Great Lakes.
And if you can’t get there in person, Jerry Dennis will transport you in spirit.
- Jerry Dennis, The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas
This is a tall order.
To capture the very essence of the Great Lakes, five of the most impressive bodies of freshwater on earth.
It is quite an essence.
Some of my most unforgettable childhood memories come from a trip around the Lakes, starting in Duluth and ending at Niagara Falls. I’ve forgotten a billion things since then, but I still recall the first time I climbed over a grassy berm and saw Superior stretching out before me; the bags full of agates I collected; the cold spray of waves crashing against a breakwater; the wink of a lighthouse at dusk; the long, low silhouettes of bulk freighters as they journeyed across the horizon.
It is trite and corny to say, but Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are magical. They not only create their own weather; they weave their own spells. They are massive, yet contained. They are havens for recreation, yet can turn deadly in an instant. You can thrill to a pleasure cruise, yet know that beneath the keel of your boat, there are thousands of shipwrecks. To stand on the shores of the Great Lakes is to be caught in a mist of history, lore, and legend. The story of the Great Lakes is a story of exploration, scientific ingenuity, commerce, and feats of engineering. It is also the story of greed, shortsightedness, and of vessels – from birchbark canoes to the Edmund Fitzgerald – swallowed whole.
Like I said, trying to wrap your arms around this is a tall order. Yet Jerry Dennis accomplishes the feat in The Living Great Lakes.
The idea underlying this book is simplicity itself. Dennis, an outdoor journalist with strong regional ties, talks himself aboard the refurbished schooner Malabar, which must be sailed from Lake Michigan to Maine. As the ship makes her way across Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario (and the locks and rivers in between), Dennis intercuts the present-day journey (seamanship, storms, personality clashes, and a clogged sewage system!) with digressions on geology, marine biology, history, tourism, and the environment. He regales you with stories of lost liners; with the Lakes’ unique weather patterns; with the construction of the systems of locks that allow ships to follow water uphill. There is talk of fishing, navigation, and of the intricate ecosystems that are regularly thrown out of balance.
Dennis is forced to cut away from the Malabar on occasion, especially since the schooner’s route did not touch Lake Superior. When he does veer away, however, he manages to maintain momentum by finding a nice narrative arc to follow. For instance, he covers the vastness of Superior by tethering himself to a canoe trip along the shore.
(Side note: This was published in 2003. The Malabar’s trip took place over roughly a month in 2000. Thus, The Living Great Lakes takes place in a kinder, gentler world, a world where the Cold War had ended, the Towers still stood, and there were no wars in faraway countries. This helps ratchet the nostalgia factor up to eleven, but does nothing to detract from what Dennis has to say, especially with regards to the environmental conditions of the Great Lakes. A fifth of the earth’s surface freshwater is contained within them, and they need to be protected. That was true then. It is just as true now).
A book like this resembles a guided tour. As such, it lives or dies by how much you like the guide. Dennis comes across as a curious, amiable, and up-for-anything kind of guy. He is perceptive about people, and does a great job of drawing out the stories of the men and women he meets. While he often reflects on his own experiences, he doesn’t come across as overly pompous or navel gazing. His humor is mostly of the unobtrusive, dad-joke variety, and if he has a tendency to name-drop folks I’ve never heard of, and to quote from a hoary cast of literary luminaries, such things are easily forgiven. It is also worth mentioning that Dennis is a legit journalist, with a journalist’s nose for a story. On one occasion, this allows him to crash a memorial service for the dead of the Fitzgerald. He even provides annotated endnotes, in case you are looking for further reading.
Most important of all, Dennis can flat out write. He is a natural storyteller, with an excellent sense of pacing, a good eye for the well-constructed scene, and facility for evocative detail. There is, for instance, a haunting flashback to 1967, when Dennis was a child growing up on the banks of Lake Michigan. His family had intended to go out fishing, but a squall kept them ashore. Hundreds of others went out, unfortunately, and were swamped by heavy waters. Most were rescued. Some were not. Dennis vividly describes being on the shore and watching two men drown just a hundred feet from safety.
Waves broke over the two men, one after another. With each wave they disappeared, and we saw only glimpses of orange in the froth…I had sand in my eyes. I turned away and rubbed them and turned back and saw the faces of the men in the water. I made eye contact with one of them. He was heavy and gray, the age of my grandfather. He could have been our insurance man or the guy who delivered our bottled gas. He seemed apologetic. I kept expecting him to smile at me and shrug. A wave would crash over him and after a few moments he would come up coughing and spitting water. Every time it happened, he looked a little more apologetic…
Dennis closes The Living Great Lakes with a plea to protect them. From invasive species. From pollution. From rapacious Arizonans who are slowly coming to realize they built their golfing empires in a desert. This is all to the good. For as Dennis aptly demonstrates, these lakes are a treasure for humanity; they don’t belong to the richest corporate entity with the biggest pipeline.
But that’s just stuff to get the blood riled. The Living Great Lakes works best when it is soothing. When it lets you turn your face toward the sun and feel the breeze against your cheeks, the sails ruffling overhead.
Towards the end, Dennis has left the Malabar and is headed back home. He conjures an all-too-familiar scene:
Inside the quaintly crowded terminal, I was elbowed out of the way by a suited tycoon of twenty-four who was determined to get in line ahead of me. Around us, every third person talked into a cellular phone. All were doing more talking than listening, and every conversation was the same – where I am, where I’m going, when I’ll arrive, did you send the contract, the deal’s done, the deal’s dead, we should get together for a beer. The world had gotten on quite well without me. It does that.
It’s a description of modern life that has only intensified since this book’s publication. In the midst of this maddening buzz of toxic politics, ear-splitting social media intrusions, and the relentless commodification of everything in daily life, it is more important than ever to get away, to some simpler place.
A place like the Great Lakes.
And if you can’t get there in person, Jerry Dennis will transport you in spirit.
February 8, 2022
Wow, what an amazing book!
I may not be the most objective reviewer, living as I do so near to these wonders, but I heartily recommend this book. For anyone who appreciates these lakes' beauty, who is awed by their presence, who enjoys time spent on the water or at the beach or in the surrounding region: this book is for you. If you have never seen them, you may enjoy learning about them. But if you have seen them—if you have ever lived where a baby's first words are Dada, Mama, and LakeEffect—then this book will be like coming home.
An in-depth (haha) look at the Great Lakes, covering their history, their ecology, their present environmental concerns, their surrounding areas (both American and Canadian), the people who have lived and worked on them, the weather patterns, the mechanics of sailing, the different types of ships, famous Great Lakes shipwrecks, the architecture of the bridges, firsthand accounts of adventures on the Lakes, contrasts with the salt oceans, and even observations from famous writers on the unique properties of these five massive bodies of water. And it's all interspersed with his own memoirs, in which he details his own adventures on the water.
The good:
• Clear writing
• Excellent detail
• Explained complicated subject matter clearly
• Well-sourced
• Adventure! Excitement! Human drama! Survival and death on the Inland Seas!
• Excellent treatment of people the author knew. His fellow shipmates felt well-crafted and nuanced.
• Excellent treatment of the human history surrounding the lake. Details about different Native American nations who interacted with the lakes, as well as America, Canada, and European countries.
• Took the time to explain the science involved
• Warm, conversational tone
• Information about famous events, places, and things that are connected to the lakes, such as the Edmund Fitzgerald disaster, the Great Chicago and Peshtigo fires, and the Mackinac Bridge.
• Jerry Dennis's genuine love of these lakes shines through and informs the whole of the book
The bad:
• Hey, maybe I'll think of something to put here.
Amazing.
I may not be the most objective reviewer, living as I do so near to these wonders, but I heartily recommend this book. For anyone who appreciates these lakes' beauty, who is awed by their presence, who enjoys time spent on the water or at the beach or in the surrounding region: this book is for you. If you have never seen them, you may enjoy learning about them. But if you have seen them—if you have ever lived where a baby's first words are Dada, Mama, and LakeEffect—then this book will be like coming home.
An in-depth (haha) look at the Great Lakes, covering their history, their ecology, their present environmental concerns, their surrounding areas (both American and Canadian), the people who have lived and worked on them, the weather patterns, the mechanics of sailing, the different types of ships, famous Great Lakes shipwrecks, the architecture of the bridges, firsthand accounts of adventures on the Lakes, contrasts with the salt oceans, and even observations from famous writers on the unique properties of these five massive bodies of water. And it's all interspersed with his own memoirs, in which he details his own adventures on the water.
The good:
• Clear writing
• Excellent detail
• Explained complicated subject matter clearly
• Well-sourced
• Adventure! Excitement! Human drama! Survival and death on the Inland Seas!
• Excellent treatment of people the author knew. His fellow shipmates felt well-crafted and nuanced.
• Excellent treatment of the human history surrounding the lake. Details about different Native American nations who interacted with the lakes, as well as America, Canada, and European countries.
• Took the time to explain the science involved
• Warm, conversational tone
• Information about famous events, places, and things that are connected to the lakes, such as the Edmund Fitzgerald disaster, the Great Chicago and Peshtigo fires, and the Mackinac Bridge.
• Jerry Dennis's genuine love of these lakes shines through and informs the whole of the book
The bad:
• Hey, maybe I'll think of something to put here.
Amazing.
February 22, 2025
Too many things to say about this wonderful book! Dennis found a way to organize a bunch of information along the line of a personal narrative. The whole book gets informed by knowledge and experience. I've read it three times, and I should probably read it again soon.
Here's a little thing I wrote about it quite a while ago:
Jerry Dennis is an essayist with a clear and direct style who writes as engagingly as anyone about the northern Michigan landscape. Canoeing Michigan Rivers, which Dennis wrote with Craig Date, has been the best guide to our rivers for a couple of decades now. I have always taken it with me when I head north, just in case I have a day or two to follow one of the streams they write about. I’ve even used their description of the Huron River to follow it all the way from Milford to Lake Erie.
I enjoy Dennis, as a writer, on several levels. He writes about places I’m interested in, with an intimate knowledge of their history, geology, and biology, and of the people who lived in them. The personal essays that appeared a couple of years ago in the coffee-table book Leelanau: A Portrait of Place in Photographs and Text showed that his knowledge was not only intimate but also passionate.
So I was very excited when I heard about Dennis’s new book, The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas. For quite a while, I have wanted a book that brought the human and natural history of this region together in an accessible way. As I suspected he would, Dennis succeeds wonderfully.
Early on, he says that his problem writing the book was the water itself, and how it shaped everything in the Great Lakes region: “I wanted to take hold of the immediate world, see it independent of the names we give it, then give it name. But I couldn’t grasp it.” He organizes his thoughts and his book by going out on the water on boat crews — on a racing sailboat, in a canoe for a voyageur reenactment, and finally on a restored schooner. The time on the water, moving down the Lakes, all the way to the Erie Canal and the Atlantic Ocean, becomes the narrative line from which Dennis hangs extraordinary amounts of information about the history of the region and its natural phenomena, politics, and environmental successes and challenges, and a lifetime of personal recollections.
One unforgettable memory is of the young Jerry Dennis watching two fishermen whose boat capsized in a Lake Michigan storm only 100 feet off the beach at Empire. Although the whole town tried to save them, they couldn’t. The boy “made eye contact with one of them. He was heavy and gray, the age of my grandfather. He could have been our insurance man or the guy who delivered our bottled gas. He seemed apologetic. I kept expecting him to smile at me and shrug.”
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
Here's a little thing I wrote about it quite a while ago:
Jerry Dennis is an essayist with a clear and direct style who writes as engagingly as anyone about the northern Michigan landscape. Canoeing Michigan Rivers, which Dennis wrote with Craig Date, has been the best guide to our rivers for a couple of decades now. I have always taken it with me when I head north, just in case I have a day or two to follow one of the streams they write about. I’ve even used their description of the Huron River to follow it all the way from Milford to Lake Erie.
I enjoy Dennis, as a writer, on several levels. He writes about places I’m interested in, with an intimate knowledge of their history, geology, and biology, and of the people who lived in them. The personal essays that appeared a couple of years ago in the coffee-table book Leelanau: A Portrait of Place in Photographs and Text showed that his knowledge was not only intimate but also passionate.
So I was very excited when I heard about Dennis’s new book, The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas. For quite a while, I have wanted a book that brought the human and natural history of this region together in an accessible way. As I suspected he would, Dennis succeeds wonderfully.
Early on, he says that his problem writing the book was the water itself, and how it shaped everything in the Great Lakes region: “I wanted to take hold of the immediate world, see it independent of the names we give it, then give it name. But I couldn’t grasp it.” He organizes his thoughts and his book by going out on the water on boat crews — on a racing sailboat, in a canoe for a voyageur reenactment, and finally on a restored schooner. The time on the water, moving down the Lakes, all the way to the Erie Canal and the Atlantic Ocean, becomes the narrative line from which Dennis hangs extraordinary amounts of information about the history of the region and its natural phenomena, politics, and environmental successes and challenges, and a lifetime of personal recollections.
One unforgettable memory is of the young Jerry Dennis watching two fishermen whose boat capsized in a Lake Michigan storm only 100 feet off the beach at Empire. Although the whole town tried to save them, they couldn’t. The boy “made eye contact with one of them. He was heavy and gray, the age of my grandfather. He could have been our insurance man or the guy who delivered our bottled gas. He seemed apologetic. I kept expecting him to smile at me and shrug.”
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
March 9, 2022
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As a Clevelander, born and raised, who spent much of my childhood on the shores of Erie, I had hopes for this book. Some interesting facts about the Great Lakes in here, but the book lacked depth. Despite the name of the book, there were chapters on the travels down the Erie Canal and Atlantic Coast - not the Great Lakes, yo. He really focused on Lake Michigan, which fine, he grew up there, but I felt like Erie and Ontario in particular lacked a fair amount of attention and were sacrificed in favor of parts that weren't about Great Lakes. Much of the history sections of the book started when colonization occurred and it would've been interesting to hear about some of the indigenous stories and history around the lake. The book has an interesting premise, but this author would not have been my top pick for someone to do a bio/memoir/travelogue around the Great Lakes. He was pretty dull. Also, I'm petty, but geography was such a big part of this book and there were NO MAPS. NONE.. C'mon. I kept Googling to understand fully the places he was discussing.
This book is the equivalent of plain white bread. It is bland and disappointing.
As a Clevelander, born and raised, who spent much of my childhood on the shores of Erie, I had hopes for this book. Some interesting facts about the Great Lakes in here, but the book lacked depth. Despite the name of the book, there were chapters on the travels down the Erie Canal and Atlantic Coast - not the Great Lakes, yo. He really focused on Lake Michigan, which fine, he grew up there, but I felt like Erie and Ontario in particular lacked a fair amount of attention and were sacrificed in favor of parts that weren't about Great Lakes. Much of the history sections of the book started when colonization occurred and it would've been interesting to hear about some of the indigenous stories and history around the lake. The book has an interesting premise, but this author would not have been my top pick for someone to do a bio/memoir/travelogue around the Great Lakes. He was pretty dull. Also, I'm petty, but geography was such a big part of this book and there were NO MAPS. NONE.. C'mon. I kept Googling to understand fully the places he was discussing.
This book is the equivalent of plain white bread. It is bland and disappointing.
August 1, 2021
This one is equal parts teaching and travelogue, and it’s often surprisingly engrossing and entertaining. He shares numerous facts about the Great Lakes as he embarks on a sailing voyage from Lake Superior through the Erie Canal to NYC. I know my family has appreciated me sharing the many great facts on the Great Lakes as I made my way through this book!
Highly recommended.
I’ve probably made this sound boring which is why you should read Matt’s much more useful and informative review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Highly recommended.
I’ve probably made this sound boring which is why you should read Matt’s much more useful and informative review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
April 28, 2022
I enjoyed this, part travelogue part Great Lakes history very much. A recommended read for any armchair sailor. I discovered this book by browsing the bookshelf of a fellow Goodreads member. That is one of the great values of GR. Thanks, MATT.
The author, an outdoors journalist and very familiar with the Great Lakes, volunteers as a crew member on a large schooner. The schooner is to be transported with its interesting and likable crew members to its new owner in Bar Harbor Maine. This four-week journey is through the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, down the Hudon River, through the Long Island Sound to Bar Harbor. This writer not only describes this adventurous journey but tells stories of his past sailing, canoeing and hiking experiences through these vast inland lakes. He is an interesting raconteur.
His knowledge and love of the region comes to life as he tells of the complexity of its natural history, geology, meteorology, marine biology and human and industrial impact. What surprised me most about this vast freshwater inland sea, was how it created its own tumultuous weather with a devastating history of sinking so many vessels including large cargo ships. I have seen huge seas while in the U.S. Coast Guard, sailing through the North Atlantic along the west coast of Greenland past the Arctic Circle. But never thought that possible in the middle of America.
The author, an outdoors journalist and very familiar with the Great Lakes, volunteers as a crew member on a large schooner. The schooner is to be transported with its interesting and likable crew members to its new owner in Bar Harbor Maine. This four-week journey is through the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, down the Hudon River, through the Long Island Sound to Bar Harbor. This writer not only describes this adventurous journey but tells stories of his past sailing, canoeing and hiking experiences through these vast inland lakes. He is an interesting raconteur.
His knowledge and love of the region comes to life as he tells of the complexity of its natural history, geology, meteorology, marine biology and human and industrial impact. What surprised me most about this vast freshwater inland sea, was how it created its own tumultuous weather with a devastating history of sinking so many vessels including large cargo ships. I have seen huge seas while in the U.S. Coast Guard, sailing through the North Atlantic along the west coast of Greenland past the Arctic Circle. But never thought that possible in the middle of America.
March 19, 2024
I listened to this on my commute after listening to the Shakleton story. It was neat to read about something closer to home. The author joins the crew of a tall ship on its journey from Lake Michigan through the Great Lakes to Maine. He tells storyies of this journey, history of places they pass by or dock in, and other interesting tidbits. I enjoyed this!
January 13, 2008
Jerry Dennis is simply a great story-teller, and he weaves together history, ecology, and memoir into a great yarn. He clearly loves the Great Lakes as much as I love Michigan, and is on a mission to impress the reader with their rich histories, power, and environmental fragility. I also appreciated that his adventure writing was not bogged down by machismo. I would've liked more detail about historical and contemporary Native American groups and their interactions with the Lakes. In his re-telling of the adventures of the Voyageurs, Dennis falls into the common trap of conflating "wilderness" with lands unaltered by Europeans.
The sections on the environmental histories of the Great Lakes are worth reading on their own as both cautional and inspirational tales.
I think the clear-cutting of the North Woods and the ensuing fires that took thousands of lives ought to be remembered as a human-provoked environmental disaster on par with the Dust Bowl. The beautiful land of Northern Michigan that we know today must have been a truly terrifying place 130 years ago, when forest fires would sweep across the state from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, burning everything and everyone in their wake.
The near-collapse and tenious resurgence of the Great Lakes fisheries in this century is another fascinating story that shows that the Lakes have been through hard times before. Fifty years ago, I could not have ordered a Lake Michigan whitefish dinner at my favorite restaurant Up North (today I'd be wise to limit my consumption because of the accumulation of pollutants in the fish, but that's another story). Scientists have made some stunning progress in halting the insurgant attack of invasive species and helping fisheries recover in the past decades, but they still do not fully understand the complex ecosystems of the Lakes.
Although there are no pandas in the North Woods and no whales in the Great Lakes, I think their histories are rich enough with natural and human drama to capture a child's (or adult's) sense of wonder. Environmental educators should start by teaching about the environment that is familiar to their students, and the Great Lakes provide no shortage of interesting material.
The sections on the environmental histories of the Great Lakes are worth reading on their own as both cautional and inspirational tales.
I think the clear-cutting of the North Woods and the ensuing fires that took thousands of lives ought to be remembered as a human-provoked environmental disaster on par with the Dust Bowl. The beautiful land of Northern Michigan that we know today must have been a truly terrifying place 130 years ago, when forest fires would sweep across the state from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, burning everything and everyone in their wake.
The near-collapse and tenious resurgence of the Great Lakes fisheries in this century is another fascinating story that shows that the Lakes have been through hard times before. Fifty years ago, I could not have ordered a Lake Michigan whitefish dinner at my favorite restaurant Up North (today I'd be wise to limit my consumption because of the accumulation of pollutants in the fish, but that's another story). Scientists have made some stunning progress in halting the insurgant attack of invasive species and helping fisheries recover in the past decades, but they still do not fully understand the complex ecosystems of the Lakes.
Although there are no pandas in the North Woods and no whales in the Great Lakes, I think their histories are rich enough with natural and human drama to capture a child's (or adult's) sense of wonder. Environmental educators should start by teaching about the environment that is familiar to their students, and the Great Lakes provide no shortage of interesting material.
June 17, 2018
My actual rating for this amazing book would be 4.75 stars, because it barely mentions the greatest of all cities on the Great Lakes, BUFFALO, NEW YORK!!!!
OK, that bit of local jingoism aside, this is a truly fantastic book about a region of the country that many don't really seem to think all that much about. Author Dennis combines history, science, personal memoir, and travel narrative in one book that journeys through all five of the lakes, and also down the Erie Canal and the Hudson River to boot (as both are essential to the history of the Lakes as trade route). Dennis slides from one topic to the next seamlessly, from the building of the Mackinac Bridge to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald to the status of Lake Erie fishery to the Peshtigo fires to the battles around the Lakes in the War of 1812 to the politics of so much fresh water sitting a tempting distance from plenty of places that want it.
I've lived within a reasonable driving distance of at least one of the Great Lakes for nearly all of my life (only the handful of years we lived in Oregon before I turned ten count against this, and probably my four years of college in Iowa), and I've lived within fifteen minutes of Lake Erie's shores for the last fifteen. This enormous region is, for me, the true heart of America and of civilization on this continent, and this book is incredibly valuable, deeply readable, and at times highly moving. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Now if Mr. Dennis can do an updated version with a chapter about Buffalo....
OK, that bit of local jingoism aside, this is a truly fantastic book about a region of the country that many don't really seem to think all that much about. Author Dennis combines history, science, personal memoir, and travel narrative in one book that journeys through all five of the lakes, and also down the Erie Canal and the Hudson River to boot (as both are essential to the history of the Lakes as trade route). Dennis slides from one topic to the next seamlessly, from the building of the Mackinac Bridge to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald to the status of Lake Erie fishery to the Peshtigo fires to the battles around the Lakes in the War of 1812 to the politics of so much fresh water sitting a tempting distance from plenty of places that want it.
I've lived within a reasonable driving distance of at least one of the Great Lakes for nearly all of my life (only the handful of years we lived in Oregon before I turned ten count against this, and probably my four years of college in Iowa), and I've lived within fifteen minutes of Lake Erie's shores for the last fifteen. This enormous region is, for me, the true heart of America and of civilization on this continent, and this book is incredibly valuable, deeply readable, and at times highly moving. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Now if Mr. Dennis can do an updated version with a chapter about Buffalo....
December 14, 2023
This is an account of the Great Lakes, detailing a sail from Lake Michigan through the lakes to the Erie Canal, the Hudson River and the Atlantic to Maine. The author, brought up on the shores of Michigan, digresses entertainingly with geographies, geologies, histories, sciences and biographies.
Having also grown up along the shores, eastern and western, of Lake Michigan and having had the great good fortune of travelling by freighter from Duluth/Superior to Bremenhaven, Germany, and having also lived for several years on Manhattan Island, I was able to relate to much of this book and to the feelings of its author.
Having also grown up along the shores, eastern and western, of Lake Michigan and having had the great good fortune of travelling by freighter from Duluth/Superior to Bremenhaven, Germany, and having also lived for several years on Manhattan Island, I was able to relate to much of this book and to the feelings of its author.
October 28, 2024
Jerry Dennis combines a travel memoir with natural history to provide detailed information about the Great Lakes. The memoir recounts his experiences in a Chicago-to-Mackinac sailing race and a journey from Traverse City (Michigan) to the coast of Maine on a tall schooner. It also includes family anecdotes from his younger days growing up near Lake Michigan. The historical and scientific segments include specifics about geological formation, early explorations, shipwrecks, fishing, pollution, invasive species, storms and other weather events, current (as of 2003) challenges, the future of the Great Lakes, and much more.
The author describes the teamwork needed for a crew to complete a sailing journey. His feelings about the crew occasionally get a little personal in terms of conflicts and differences of opinion. I did not care for some of his observations about the (few) women he encounters. The parts I enjoyed most relate to the adventures and the history. I am puzzled that it purports to cover all the Great Lakes, but there is much more coverage of Lake Michigan than the other four. It provides more details than I needed and may appeal more to those who regularly visit or live near these bodies of water. I feel like I learned quite a bit, but I could have done with less personal information and more history/science.
3.5
The author describes the teamwork needed for a crew to complete a sailing journey. His feelings about the crew occasionally get a little personal in terms of conflicts and differences of opinion. I did not care for some of his observations about the (few) women he encounters. The parts I enjoyed most relate to the adventures and the history. I am puzzled that it purports to cover all the Great Lakes, but there is much more coverage of Lake Michigan than the other four. It provides more details than I needed and may appeal more to those who regularly visit or live near these bodies of water. I feel like I learned quite a bit, but I could have done with less personal information and more history/science.
3.5
June 23, 2016
[I had the honor of introducing Jerry after studying his work.]
Jerry Dennis Intro
Those of us who identify as book-lovers, those of us who lived inside stories throughout our childhoods—we know the work of a living legend when we encounter it on the page. Similarly, those of us who have built careers out of the well-shaped sentence, the fully-formed paragraph, the intentionally crafted essay—we know what it’s like to learn from a colleague whose body of work represents a deeply significant contribution.
Today’s Keynote Speaker, Jerry Dennis, is that kind of writer. He has given us work that ignites the imagination, while also infusing it with facts. Woven into his book The Living Great Lakes, which is part memoir, part research, part adventure—the facts alone don’t invite story, but they do stay with us long after the final page has been turned—the story that’s there is, indeed, a page-turner. There’s an important kind of intentionality to that approach. We learn as we go along, but we hardly notice that we’re learning.
Whether reading a brief personal essay Jerry published 20 years ago, or a new blog post published last month, his careful focus, smart craft, and generosity of spirit that infuse the page instill readers with a sense of possibility. “You have to open yourself to natural spectacle,” Jerry writes in The River Home. “Like a child, you have to be empty of expectation, have to possess eyes that see and ears that hear. It takes practice, like anything. Sometimes you can be surprised.”
Jerry’s writing gives us those eyes and ears, as well as surprise. His place-based work, infused with facts and the imagination, adds up to what I call slow and steady eco-activism. The result is body of work that has brought the Great Lakes Region to life for thousands of readers, above and beyond its residents. His work helps people find a way into caring, into breathing fresh air, and into appreciation of natural resources—even if they aren’t looking for it. Even if they’ve never caught a fish in their lives. Even if they’ve never seen a Great Lake.
If you’re not familiar with his work, I want you to know that Jerry is an internationally acclaimed author who has earned his living as a freelance writer since 1986. His books, including A Walk in the Animal Kingdom, The Living Great Lakes, The Windward Shore, and A Place on the Water, have won numerous awards, have been translated into seven languages, have appeared on national bestseller lists, and are required reading in many universities and colleges. His essays, poems and short fiction have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, American Way, Michigan Quarterly Review, PANK, and Mid-American Review.
But his bio wasn’t always so chalk-full, and his life—as much as we may like to romanticize the life of the writer—is just as busy, exciting, boring, overbooked, full of love, full of confusion, muddled by injustice, and full of uncertainty as the rest of ours.
So what can we learn? After thirty years of making a living as a writer, I won’t go so far as to say that Jerry’s seen it all, but I will tell you that I invited him to be today’s Keynote Speaker with great confidence that he’s not going to sugar-coat what he has to tell us. He’s seen changes in the publishing industry that impact everyone in this room, and many of those changes, he’s seen from more than one angle.
I’m as eager as you are to learn more, and while he won’t be reading from his published work today, I hope you’ll take the hard facts he’s going to share during this presentation and water them with a healthy dose of Great Lakes imagination by reading his books when we’re done.
Jerry Dennis Intro
Those of us who identify as book-lovers, those of us who lived inside stories throughout our childhoods—we know the work of a living legend when we encounter it on the page. Similarly, those of us who have built careers out of the well-shaped sentence, the fully-formed paragraph, the intentionally crafted essay—we know what it’s like to learn from a colleague whose body of work represents a deeply significant contribution.
Today’s Keynote Speaker, Jerry Dennis, is that kind of writer. He has given us work that ignites the imagination, while also infusing it with facts. Woven into his book The Living Great Lakes, which is part memoir, part research, part adventure—the facts alone don’t invite story, but they do stay with us long after the final page has been turned—the story that’s there is, indeed, a page-turner. There’s an important kind of intentionality to that approach. We learn as we go along, but we hardly notice that we’re learning.
Whether reading a brief personal essay Jerry published 20 years ago, or a new blog post published last month, his careful focus, smart craft, and generosity of spirit that infuse the page instill readers with a sense of possibility. “You have to open yourself to natural spectacle,” Jerry writes in The River Home. “Like a child, you have to be empty of expectation, have to possess eyes that see and ears that hear. It takes practice, like anything. Sometimes you can be surprised.”
Jerry’s writing gives us those eyes and ears, as well as surprise. His place-based work, infused with facts and the imagination, adds up to what I call slow and steady eco-activism. The result is body of work that has brought the Great Lakes Region to life for thousands of readers, above and beyond its residents. His work helps people find a way into caring, into breathing fresh air, and into appreciation of natural resources—even if they aren’t looking for it. Even if they’ve never caught a fish in their lives. Even if they’ve never seen a Great Lake.
If you’re not familiar with his work, I want you to know that Jerry is an internationally acclaimed author who has earned his living as a freelance writer since 1986. His books, including A Walk in the Animal Kingdom, The Living Great Lakes, The Windward Shore, and A Place on the Water, have won numerous awards, have been translated into seven languages, have appeared on national bestseller lists, and are required reading in many universities and colleges. His essays, poems and short fiction have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, American Way, Michigan Quarterly Review, PANK, and Mid-American Review.
But his bio wasn’t always so chalk-full, and his life—as much as we may like to romanticize the life of the writer—is just as busy, exciting, boring, overbooked, full of love, full of confusion, muddled by injustice, and full of uncertainty as the rest of ours.
So what can we learn? After thirty years of making a living as a writer, I won’t go so far as to say that Jerry’s seen it all, but I will tell you that I invited him to be today’s Keynote Speaker with great confidence that he’s not going to sugar-coat what he has to tell us. He’s seen changes in the publishing industry that impact everyone in this room, and many of those changes, he’s seen from more than one angle.
I’m as eager as you are to learn more, and while he won’t be reading from his published work today, I hope you’ll take the hard facts he’s going to share during this presentation and water them with a healthy dose of Great Lakes imagination by reading his books when we’re done.
July 14, 2011
I read this for the Weque summer bookclub, and it was very fun to read this so close to Lake Michigan, about which a good portion of the book is written. This book contains so many fascinating scientific and historical facts, stories, anecdotes, and wonder, it is hard to summarize it in a few sentences. There were so many familiar place-names among the Great Lakes explorers - Champlain, Hennepin, Charlevoix (a priest, as it turns out) Nicolet, Joliet, Marquette. I found it fascinating to read about the history especially. I also was interested to read about many of the unusual incidents that are part of great lakes history, from the Peshtigo fire (we pass the Fire museum in Peshtigo each year), the singing of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and another harrowing tale from that same evening, the huge salmon boom in the 60's, and numerous others. He also covers many of the ecological challenges the lakes have faced and continue to face even now.
These facts and stories are all interwoven in the author's own Great Lakes experience, growing up in Michigan and especially sailing on two ships, one The Gauntlet in the Chicago to Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw!) race, the other, his time on the Malabar, sailing her from Traverse City to Maine. I am not a sailor, but these were excellently told tales of at least two slices of nautical life on the great lakes. I would have liked to hear about the experience of travelling these lakes by freighter as well, but it was not included in this book.
This is a book that certainly deepens my already considerable appreciation for the unusual, spectacular, sometimes terrifying bodies of water that have influenced the growth of our nation much more than most realize.
These facts and stories are all interwoven in the author's own Great Lakes experience, growing up in Michigan and especially sailing on two ships, one The Gauntlet in the Chicago to Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw!) race, the other, his time on the Malabar, sailing her from Traverse City to Maine. I am not a sailor, but these were excellently told tales of at least two slices of nautical life on the great lakes. I would have liked to hear about the experience of travelling these lakes by freighter as well, but it was not included in this book.
This is a book that certainly deepens my already considerable appreciation for the unusual, spectacular, sometimes terrifying bodies of water that have influenced the growth of our nation much more than most realize.
June 11, 2015
This book was exactly what I was hoping it would be. Ever since reading "Blue Highways" 35 years ago, I have enjoyed books that are about journeys, and this book is about a trip on a sailboat through the Great Lakes. And like the other great books of this genre, it provides a look at the places that the author visits (both in this journey and in previous boating expeditions), and touches on history, ecology, biology, and even some persona philosophy. Not being a boat person, the book didn't really get me pumped up to take a similar journey, but it did reinforce my desire to re-visit the Upper Great Lakes region, especially the Upper Peninsula.
May 30, 2020
This book provides a nice balance of memoir and factual information about the Great Lakes. The author recounts his experience in a Chicago to Mackinac sailing race and sailing through the Great Lakes from Traverse City to the coast of Maine on a tall ship. In his telling of these adventures and growing up near Lake Michigan, he sprinkles information about the geological formation of the Great Lakes, history and lore of shipwrecks, and such things as sport fishing, water pollution, and the future of the Great Lakes. The book was well-paced and clearly written. Overall, it was entertaining and interesting to read.
June 2, 2016
A boat and a crew sailing the Great lakes from Travers city to Bar Harbor, ME with lots of storms thrown in for excitement. The author throws in a a a lot of history about the the areas they are sailing through. The history of this area goes back to the 1600s I especially enjoyed this part. I I read this book because I live on Lake Michigan I learned a lot about the lake that I hadn't known before..
September 22, 2017
This hit several marks for me: It is written by a journalist; it is about the Great Lakes, which surround me now but were not part of my childhood; and the author tells relevant stories while explaining current situations. I enjoyed this book, which was also recommended by my wife and son. I learned a great deal about the lakes.
September 16, 2022
obsessed, literally obsessed. reading this book while drinking my weekly allotted iced coffee was a special kind of insanity <3
December 28, 2023
Took me forever to read, but very enjoyable. Only made me more obsessed with the Great Lakes!
September 6, 2010
Dennis details the Great Lakes voyage of an old sailing schooner called the Malabar. The trip originates in Lake Michigan. Malabar (and crew) travels up through the Great Lakes, through the Erie Canal, into the Hudson River and finally the old ship takes port at Long Island. The sailing trip serves as a tour de force of the Great Lakes and the spine of Jerry Dennis’s fine book. That said, his writings often tact far from Malabar’s main voyage. His side stories round out the ancient history and legends of the Great Lakes. Dennis retells old ship wreck stories, describes the history of the many towns he encounters and details the ecosystem of the modern day lakes. It all rolls out in a straight forward journal who’s sum is much greater than it parts. I finished The Living Great Lakes satisfied and grateful for the intimate tour of the largest group of fresh water lakes on this planet. Thanks Jerry Dennis, write another one, I’ll stand in line for it.
September 2, 2019
H-O-M-E-S - I grew up on Lake Erie, and that's the acronym we learned for remembering the names of the Great Lakes. Huron - Ontario - Michigan - Erie - Superior. Individual bodies of fresh water - 1/5 of the fresh water in the world - that are joined by canals and rivers, and make our inland sea.
Jerry Dennis recounts two voyages on the Great Lakes, and in doing so gives us: History - natural, cultural, political; marine science and lore, adventure, an environmental warning, a cast of characters that you'd like to have a beer with, and writing that is crisp, and often poetic.
This is a damn good read.
Jerry Dennis recounts two voyages on the Great Lakes, and in doing so gives us: History - natural, cultural, political; marine science and lore, adventure, an environmental warning, a cast of characters that you'd like to have a beer with, and writing that is crisp, and often poetic.
This is a damn good read.
June 25, 2016
Jerry Dennis is a master of making his love for the Great Lakes (and nature in general) real for his readers. His descriptions are clear and crisp, his tales are told as if you're sitting on a porch, shooting the... breeze, but he can call up pertinent data and facts galore that expand upon his story. A great read, especially for those of us who are just learning to appreciate the amazing resource we have in the Great Lakes.
July 10, 2019
Actually, a well written book. Why two stars? Don't name your book "The Living Great Lakes" and then focus on your trip down the Erie CANAL and to Maine via the OCEAN. With a title like this you'd expect Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake on the planet, to garner more pages than the Erie Canal but, no. Rename the book and I'll rate it as the 4 stars it deserves as a voyage down what I'm sure is a nice canal.
April 18, 2024
I thought this book was very entertaining and informing. The book was more about sailing on the lakes, the differences between the lakes, and some environmental concerns. The book reiterates how important the clean water in the lakes have become for the world and why there is pressure to allow other states access to this water.
February 1, 2008
It's an interesting read, full of enough history and ecology to engage someone with an interest in the Great Lakes region.
The book is bogged down, however, by way too much new age mumbo jumbo. The author feels a deep, spirtual connection with the Mother Lakes. Blah blah blah.
The book is bogged down, however, by way too much new age mumbo jumbo. The author feels a deep, spirtual connection with the Mother Lakes. Blah blah blah.
February 6, 2017
This was a thoroughly enjoyable book, the type of travel book I like best, with interesting discussions of both the human and natural history of a particular part of the world blended with the personal experiences and adventures of the author in the region. The historical and scientific information was fascinating and I learned quite a bit, while the personal experiences were often riveting, even daring at times, and I very much enjoyed reading them.
The framing narrative of the entire book was the author’s experiences on the ship _Malabar_, a two-masted gaff-rigged with topsails schooner, of a type that was once quite common on the Great Lakes during most of the nineteenth century. Though not exactly traditional (among other things it had a ferro-cement hull, essentially cement over a steel framework), it did provide the author with all the experiences one might have sailing a ship on the Great Lakes. During the vessel’s six-week voyage from Traverse City, Michigan (located on the northwest portion of the Lower Peninsula) all the way through the Welland Canal and the Erie Canal to the Atlantic Ocean, the author experienced some rather scary storms, running aground, hairy encounters with much larger Great Lakes merchant ships, storm debris, the challenges of taking a schooner through the canals, ship malfunctions, and the distinctive personalities of the crew, confined as they were on the ship for days and weeks at a time. As the _Malabar_ passed by various coasts, islands, bridges, and cities and entered other lakes in the Great Lakes, the author would launch into discussions of natural history and the human history of the region, much of which I will admit I had no prior exposure to.
Though the _Malabar_ was the main narrative that framed this travelogue and history book, there were several other journeys that the author detailed and used as springboards for interesting information about the Great Lakes and the lands that surround them, each presented almost as flashbacks during the _Malabar_ voyage. One was his participation as a rather inexperienced crew member on a sailboat racing in the Chicago-to-Mackinac Sailboat Race (or the Chi-Mac), a 333 mile race from Chicago to Mackinac Island, the longest and longest held freshwater regatta in the world. Another, with a completely different feel, was his padding trip on a 36-foot replica of a voyageur’s canoe on Lake Superior. There was another, briefer one towards the end of the book, a bit sobering given how it ended, of the author as a boy not far from home fishing for abundant introduced salmon on Lake Michigan with his family on their fourteen-foot fiberglass runabout and later, his experiences on the shore during a tragic storm.
The asides as I mentioned on the human and natural history were excellent. Sometimes only a few paragraphs were devoted to a subject, other times a number of pages or it was a topic visited more than once. Though at times I would have liked more information on a particular subject, I was generally satisfied as the author provided copious and very readable end notes with suggestions for further reading.
Favorite (and sometimes quite tragic) asides on human history included his discussion of the brief-lived “Mormon kingdom” founded by renegade Mormon James Jesse Strang on Beaver Island (Lake Michigan’s largest island at 14 miles long and 7 miles wide), the history of the Mackinac Bridge (also known as “Mighty Mac” or “Big Mac,” which when it opened in 1957 at five miles long was the longest suspension bridge in the world), the brief discussion of the different types of canoes once used on the lakes (Montreal canoes or canots du miatre, generally 36-40 foot birchbark canoes and the smaller “canoes of the north” or canots du nord, which were about 25 feet long), a very detailed retelling of the sinking of the _Edmund Fitzgerald_, lost with all hands on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, the timber boom and then famine of the northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, a rush to harvest the Great North Woods that left a devastated wasteland and set the stage for horrific “holocaust fires” (the Peshtigo fire which occurred on October 8, 1871, the same day as the Great Fire in Chicago, killed 1,200 people in Peshtigo, Wisconsin), the story of the _Griffin_, La Salle’s sailing ship, the first sailing ship to travel the Great Lakes above Lake Ontario, a ship that disappeared from history in September 1679, and a very brief discussion of the “blackbirders,” people who lurked on the north shore of Lake Erie (on Long Point, a 20 mile long sandspit protruding into the lake), luring ships to their doom by setting bonfires promising safe passage when in fact they were designed to wreck ships , so that their cargos could be harvested.
Interesting discussion on natural history included the dune ecosystems of the Great Lakes (such as seen preserved at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and at Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan), including their geological origins, the plants that call the home, and the fight to save the dunes from mining and development, and the long sections on the rise and fall of the Great Lakes commercial and recreational fisheries of yellow perch, walleye, and blue pike (a poorly known fish today, it was said to be a smaller cousin of the walleye and now extinct) thanks to pollution and the introduction of exotic alewife, carp, rainbow smelt, and sea lamprey (the latter which reduced the catch in Lake Michigan from 5.5 million pounds in 1946 to an astonishing 402 pounds in 1947).
Throughout the book the author never forgot to detail the character of each of the Great Lakes as they sailed on them. Though he would break away on his asides or flashbacks, time and again he provided a very visual and visceral feel for sailing and just being on the Great Lakes. The reader is introduced to just how dynamic the waters can be, with depth especially in harbors and near shore varying quite a bit thanks to various surges of water, either “wind setups” caused by large volumes of water blown to the windward shore, or seiches, which are similar and are caused by sudden changes in wind and barometric pressure. As freshwater is less dense than salt water, lake waves are often quite different, not forming classic ocean rollers but often steep, short-period waves, rising quicker, running faster, and often harder on a boat than the long rollers of salt water seas. Squalls can arise quickly on the Great Lakes and are often the worst where the wind can gain force when it is funneled between islands and the mainland (such as around the Manitou Passage). The _Malabar_ didn’t have the square sails a salt water schooner might have but instead gaff-rigged sails, which can be taken down and put up faster and with fewer crew than square sails, as while one can leave the same sails up for long periods of time out at sea, there is a constant threat of running aground on islands or the mainland shore while sailing the Great Lakes. Time and again not only myself but people encountered in the book were astonished at how clean and clear the Great Lakes often are and how one can either see straight to the bottom in many areas or that vast schools of fish were present (though this was not without cost, as efforts to clean the pollution from the water, while successful, still left many square miles of highly toxic lakebed sediments, while other areas have clear water thanks to infestations of exotic filter-feeding zebra mussels, which the jury is still out if they are making the water too clean and denying other fish and aquatic invertebrates vital food).
I really liked the writing style, a good blend of the personable with the scholarly, the descriptions were vivid, and it read very fast.
The framing narrative of the entire book was the author’s experiences on the ship _Malabar_, a two-masted gaff-rigged with topsails schooner, of a type that was once quite common on the Great Lakes during most of the nineteenth century. Though not exactly traditional (among other things it had a ferro-cement hull, essentially cement over a steel framework), it did provide the author with all the experiences one might have sailing a ship on the Great Lakes. During the vessel’s six-week voyage from Traverse City, Michigan (located on the northwest portion of the Lower Peninsula) all the way through the Welland Canal and the Erie Canal to the Atlantic Ocean, the author experienced some rather scary storms, running aground, hairy encounters with much larger Great Lakes merchant ships, storm debris, the challenges of taking a schooner through the canals, ship malfunctions, and the distinctive personalities of the crew, confined as they were on the ship for days and weeks at a time. As the _Malabar_ passed by various coasts, islands, bridges, and cities and entered other lakes in the Great Lakes, the author would launch into discussions of natural history and the human history of the region, much of which I will admit I had no prior exposure to.
Though the _Malabar_ was the main narrative that framed this travelogue and history book, there were several other journeys that the author detailed and used as springboards for interesting information about the Great Lakes and the lands that surround them, each presented almost as flashbacks during the _Malabar_ voyage. One was his participation as a rather inexperienced crew member on a sailboat racing in the Chicago-to-Mackinac Sailboat Race (or the Chi-Mac), a 333 mile race from Chicago to Mackinac Island, the longest and longest held freshwater regatta in the world. Another, with a completely different feel, was his padding trip on a 36-foot replica of a voyageur’s canoe on Lake Superior. There was another, briefer one towards the end of the book, a bit sobering given how it ended, of the author as a boy not far from home fishing for abundant introduced salmon on Lake Michigan with his family on their fourteen-foot fiberglass runabout and later, his experiences on the shore during a tragic storm.
The asides as I mentioned on the human and natural history were excellent. Sometimes only a few paragraphs were devoted to a subject, other times a number of pages or it was a topic visited more than once. Though at times I would have liked more information on a particular subject, I was generally satisfied as the author provided copious and very readable end notes with suggestions for further reading.
Favorite (and sometimes quite tragic) asides on human history included his discussion of the brief-lived “Mormon kingdom” founded by renegade Mormon James Jesse Strang on Beaver Island (Lake Michigan’s largest island at 14 miles long and 7 miles wide), the history of the Mackinac Bridge (also known as “Mighty Mac” or “Big Mac,” which when it opened in 1957 at five miles long was the longest suspension bridge in the world), the brief discussion of the different types of canoes once used on the lakes (Montreal canoes or canots du miatre, generally 36-40 foot birchbark canoes and the smaller “canoes of the north” or canots du nord, which were about 25 feet long), a very detailed retelling of the sinking of the _Edmund Fitzgerald_, lost with all hands on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, the timber boom and then famine of the northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, a rush to harvest the Great North Woods that left a devastated wasteland and set the stage for horrific “holocaust fires” (the Peshtigo fire which occurred on October 8, 1871, the same day as the Great Fire in Chicago, killed 1,200 people in Peshtigo, Wisconsin), the story of the _Griffin_, La Salle’s sailing ship, the first sailing ship to travel the Great Lakes above Lake Ontario, a ship that disappeared from history in September 1679, and a very brief discussion of the “blackbirders,” people who lurked on the north shore of Lake Erie (on Long Point, a 20 mile long sandspit protruding into the lake), luring ships to their doom by setting bonfires promising safe passage when in fact they were designed to wreck ships , so that their cargos could be harvested.
Interesting discussion on natural history included the dune ecosystems of the Great Lakes (such as seen preserved at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and at Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan), including their geological origins, the plants that call the home, and the fight to save the dunes from mining and development, and the long sections on the rise and fall of the Great Lakes commercial and recreational fisheries of yellow perch, walleye, and blue pike (a poorly known fish today, it was said to be a smaller cousin of the walleye and now extinct) thanks to pollution and the introduction of exotic alewife, carp, rainbow smelt, and sea lamprey (the latter which reduced the catch in Lake Michigan from 5.5 million pounds in 1946 to an astonishing 402 pounds in 1947).
Throughout the book the author never forgot to detail the character of each of the Great Lakes as they sailed on them. Though he would break away on his asides or flashbacks, time and again he provided a very visual and visceral feel for sailing and just being on the Great Lakes. The reader is introduced to just how dynamic the waters can be, with depth especially in harbors and near shore varying quite a bit thanks to various surges of water, either “wind setups” caused by large volumes of water blown to the windward shore, or seiches, which are similar and are caused by sudden changes in wind and barometric pressure. As freshwater is less dense than salt water, lake waves are often quite different, not forming classic ocean rollers but often steep, short-period waves, rising quicker, running faster, and often harder on a boat than the long rollers of salt water seas. Squalls can arise quickly on the Great Lakes and are often the worst where the wind can gain force when it is funneled between islands and the mainland (such as around the Manitou Passage). The _Malabar_ didn’t have the square sails a salt water schooner might have but instead gaff-rigged sails, which can be taken down and put up faster and with fewer crew than square sails, as while one can leave the same sails up for long periods of time out at sea, there is a constant threat of running aground on islands or the mainland shore while sailing the Great Lakes. Time and again not only myself but people encountered in the book were astonished at how clean and clear the Great Lakes often are and how one can either see straight to the bottom in many areas or that vast schools of fish were present (though this was not without cost, as efforts to clean the pollution from the water, while successful, still left many square miles of highly toxic lakebed sediments, while other areas have clear water thanks to infestations of exotic filter-feeding zebra mussels, which the jury is still out if they are making the water too clean and denying other fish and aquatic invertebrates vital food).
I really liked the writing style, a good blend of the personable with the scholarly, the descriptions were vivid, and it read very fast.
July 20, 2022
This isn't the book I was expecting, but that's on me, not the author. Dennis uses his voyage on the Malabar as the means to tell us the natural history, economics, and human history of the Great Lakes and surrounding areas. The book is very much in the style of Paul Theroux's early travel books. There are a lot of tangential (and interesting) excursions, but we always come back to the voyage-in-progress. Dennis imparts a lot of information in an enjoyable way.
When reading, most of the time I wasn't thinking of when the book was written (2001-2002?) & published (2003). The voyage itself took place in 2000. Only very rarely does the book seem dated, and when it does, it is usually about some incidental detail like a visitor to the boat bringing aboard his CD collection. However, I suspect the current ecological state of at least some of the lakes might have changed in the intervening 20 years. As Dennis was writing, some things were in flux: the zebra mussel population, for example. The present-day reader might want to find a supplemental source of current information in that regard, if one's interest lies in that area.
In summary, the author strikes a nice balance between his personal experience and his research to give the readers a great deal of knowledge about the Great Lakes geography, natural history, human history, ecology, and economics.
When reading, most of the time I wasn't thinking of when the book was written (2001-2002?) & published (2003). The voyage itself took place in 2000. Only very rarely does the book seem dated, and when it does, it is usually about some incidental detail like a visitor to the boat bringing aboard his CD collection. However, I suspect the current ecological state of at least some of the lakes might have changed in the intervening 20 years. As Dennis was writing, some things were in flux: the zebra mussel population, for example. The present-day reader might want to find a supplemental source of current information in that regard, if one's interest lies in that area.
In summary, the author strikes a nice balance between his personal experience and his research to give the readers a great deal of knowledge about the Great Lakes geography, natural history, human history, ecology, and economics.
November 16, 2024
I began reading this while driving from Wisconsin, where I grew up, to a city on Lake Ontario, where I now live, following a route along Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Ontario. It was amazing to read this book "in situ," and I learned so much about the history, ecology, and geography of these massive bodies of water that have shaped the lands and peoples of my life. This was my first book by Jerry Daniels and I hope to read more. His ability to braid story with nature and history is breathtaking at times. Barry Press, the audiobook narrator, was fantastic.
January 4, 2026
Easy reading, and really easy to absorb information about all the different facets of the Great Lakes that this book explores- the author’s own sailing adventures, historical western exploration, natural history, modern environmental exploitation. I’m convinced sailing is the crankiest sport, and found many parallels between it and being up all night with a newborn baby.
January 25, 2023
A surprisingly excellent read filled with all kinds of historical information about the Great Lakes -- from the ice age to today. Told by a writer who hitches a ride on a tall ship schooner that travels thru all 5 lakes, taking you along his one month adventure.
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