New book: Devils on the Deep Blue Sea

[Coral]

I just received an email from 'The Daily/Tripso' and it mentioned a new book about cruising called "Devils on the Deep Blue Sea : The Dreams, Schemes and Showdowns That Built America's Cruise-Ship Empires" by Kristoffer Garin

 

Here is an amazon link: amazon

 

Here is the book description:

Left for dead after the advent of cheap, reliable air travel forty years ago, cruise shipping in the decades since has been reborn as a $12 billion industry on the cutting edge of twenty-first century global capitalism. Today, nearly ten million Americans take cruises each year, sailing to exotic destinations on floating cities that can cost upwards of $600 million each to construct.

In this terrifically entertaining history, Kristoffer A. Garin chronicles the industry’s rise from humble and comic beginnings in the early sixties through waterfront corruption and the incalculably huge impact of the hit television series The Love Boat in the seventies and eighties to the recent consolidation wars. Entrepreneurial genius and bareknuckle capitalism mate with cultural kitsch as the cruise lines dodge U.S. tax, labor, and environmental laws to make unimaginable profits while bringing the world a new form of leisure. Few businesses in America today are as colorful, lucrative, and innovative as cruise shipping, and Devils on the Deep Blue Sea is the first book to give readers a compelling behind-the-scenes look into these floating empires and the modern-day robber barons who shaped them.

 

If anyone has read this - let me know if it is worth buying? It looks like it has a release date of Thursday. I can't tell if this is going to be a good/informative book or one to stay away from.

[Dreamer333]

I haven't read it, but here is some more info about it (it hits shelves today):

 

New book delves behind the scenes of cruise biz

When it hits the shelves June 27, few readers will mistake the latest cruise-related book, “Devils on the Deep Blue Sea,” (Viking) for a guidebook on picking a cruise vacation or choosing formal or informal dinner attire.

Instead, there are cruise-ship fires, striking crew members, fortunes won and lost; “The Love Boat” and “Mardi Gras on the Rocks”; and the personalities who have run the business -- from Ted Arison, who broke with Knut Kloster and Norwegian Caribbean Lines and formed Carnival Cruise Lines, to his son Micky Arison, who closed the deal to acquire P&O Princess Cruises 30 years later.

Author Kristoffer A. Garin interviewed some of the top names in the business for “Devils,” including Micky Arison, Royal Caribbean Cruises CEO Richard Fain and Princess Cruises CEO Peter Ratcliffe -- as well as countless others -- for this 350-page timeline of an industry that he says in the first chapter, according to an advance copy obtained by TravelWeekly.com, is “rapacious, insatiable, feral.”

The book sets out some of the industry’s less leisurely sides and goes into detail with the personalities involved in some of the higher-profile takeover battles, but it’s overall pro-business and pro-industry in tone, communicating a sense of awe at its no-holds-barred growth -- the first chapter is called “The Perfect Business.”

The industry’s growth is personified in the changing Micky Arison, who morphs “from living the life of a slacker scion to corporate princedom and finally he had become an emperor.”

[bdjam]

From the synopses, it sounds tabloid-esque to me.

 

[holton]

I'm really enjoying this book and wondered if anyone else has found it well written and well researched...very entertaining if you love cruising.

[Coral]

I purchased this book and realized it wasn't "light reading" - I put it in a pile to bring on my next plane ride or cruise.

 

This is another post about this book on this board.

[OCruisers]

As Coral mentioned, there is another thread with LOTS of reviews on this book. It's on the HAL Board:

 

(or just Click Here) Devils on the Deep Blue Sea

 

I have it on order ....

 

Happy Sailing! OCruisers :)

[Druke I]

Surprisingly, World Ocean and Cruise Liner Society's Bill Miller gave the book a good review.

 

Most of the other reviews I have read were not so kind.

[WCAB]

I don't want to feel guilty for enjoying my cruises. Let the federal governement worry about how the cruise lines avoid paying their fair share of taxes. If I learn too much, it might jade my love boat perceptions.

 

Carol

[OCruisers]

Surprisingly, World Ocean and Cruise Liner Society's Bill Miller gave the book a good review.

 

Most of the other reviews I have read were not so kind.

 

Druke .... That is a surprise! He's the LAST person I'd have picked to have given this book a good review! :confused: Are YOU planning to read it?

 

Happy Sailing! OCruisers :)

[Druke I]

Ocruisers

 

I suppose if I found a copy lying about, I might pick it up and scan it - but I certainly would not buy it.

 

As BDJam says - "too tabloid-esq" (if that is a word!).

[star gazer]

The book is informative and good reading; it follows a historical format and contains a lot of neat quotes. If you are a cruiser, I suggest purchasing this book.