I liked the 12 shipwrecks and the book overall. But the description led one to think it would be more of a captivating journey with storytelling of these ships but it felt too much like a textbook. I wish it was a bit more engaging and had a fun note throughout. I did learn a lot and I appreciate all the details that were included but it was quite hard to read and finish. I was hoping for more personal notes from David and insights as he has excavated many shipwrecks himself. I think this concept is a great way to go about learning history but something is missing to draw in the reader and keep them. I finished the book, but did not take much away from it.


This book was provided to me by NetGalley. Thank you for giving me an ARC.

An interesting twist on world history, or at least the european colonization bit. I appreciate the broad range of time. And the cover is pretty.

Thank you for the ARC. I purchased a copy for my library and shared with my monthly book group.

This looked like it was going to be so interesting, however it reads like an encyclopedia. Super dry. Tried listening to the audiobook too and that was even worse. Very choppy and too many ancient and/or foreign words that the guy painfully tried to pronounce throughout the book. Just lost my interest in the overall subject matter unfortunately.

A very interesting topic that was handled well. I never would have considered the angle the author took but it was an informative and engaging way to look at history.

I just finished this book and really enjoyed it! I loved going through all these shipwrecks and their history but they felt very disconnected from one another where there could have been a smoother transition between each ship that would have made the book feel more cohesive as a whole.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free e-book copy of A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins. This book had me captured from the title. I recommend it for fans of historical nonfiction. I learned a lot from the book, enjoying the way it provided historical context for each of the shipwrecks and went into specifics for them. With each part being its own story, this is the type of book you can read a little of, put down, and return to later without having to worry about remembering too much from before.

The History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks provides a unique lens through which to view historical events, demonstrating how these tragic incidents have influenced the development of civilization. This book is a must-read for history lovers and anyone fascinated by maritime adventures, as it explores the significant shipwrecks that have had a lasting impact on our world.

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks , by David Gibbins presents a new way to look at history (which is an agreed upon body of knowledge that 'experts' in particular kinds of history decide is the current, accepted history for any given culture, nation or people at any given time and place. In other words: it changes all the time). Note that History comes before Shipwrecks in this author's choice of book title. . . order matters in this case. Still, don't let that hold you back. My first recommendation is that reading in parts is helpful as this author is a maritime archeologist, meaning he's a detail guy and it reads that way.

I always get a lot from tables of content, so here we go, by Chronology the order determined:

1. Early sea traders of prehistory (2nd millennium bc)
2. Royal cargoes - Tutankhamun (14th century bc)
3. Wine trade - Golden Age of classical Greece (5th century bc)
4. A shipwreck from Roman Empire (2nd century ad)
5. Christianity and earl Byzantium (6th century ad)
6. Tang China, the Land of Gold and Abbasid Islam (9th century ad)
7. Vikings! (11th century ad)
8. Mary Rose (1545) - King Henry VIII
9. Santo Christo de Castell0 (1667) - Dutch Golden Age
10. Royal Anne Galley (1721) - gold, piracy and African slave trade
11. HMS Terror (1848) - to the limit of endurance at ends of earth
12. SS Gairsoppa (1941) - courage and loss in the Battle of the Atlantic

[I had this weird idea when I was trying to describe the theory of this book to a friend: "It's like going forward a few millennium and people in that time are trying to figure out who we are, our culture, behaviors and trends, and they go looking for, say 12 train wrecks all over the world to see what they can determine about us." She nodded, "It would be cool to see what they would get from all our our lost cell phones, socks and gumwrappers." Hmm. I think she got it.]

Readers have their favorite parts of book: first lines, last lines, covers, typos, endpapers, cover blurbs, forwards, afterwards - well for me dedications are where I go first, and David Gibbins' is full of feeling:

In memory of my grandfather Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins Master Mariner.

Now that's a proud grandson.

*A sincere thank you to David Gibbins, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.*

This book did seem rather interesting, shipwrecks with history. But I do not know, it felt rather bland. Each chapter was about a different shipwreck but it also felt like certain ones could just be left out or you can skip them without any problem. I guess that is alright but I do not know fully how I feel about this book in the long run.

From renowned underwater archaeologist David Gibbins comes an exciting and rich narrative of human history told through the archaeological discoveries of twelve shipwrecks across time.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press & Netgalley for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! I wanted to read this book because I like the water and the ocean. I watched the movie Titanic about the shipwreck that happened and I enjoyed that movie but I wouldn’t watch it again because it’s long. I decided to DNF this book after reading 69 pages because the way this is written is very dry. It’s written like a history lesson and it doesn’t have any pictures in here. In my opinion, I would prefer to watch a documentary about shipwrecks instead of reading about them because it’s an interesting subject. I don’t know anything about it and I like watching documentaries.

my middle grade age range, I would probably include excerpts from this book in my curriculum as opposed to the whole text.

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks is a phenomenal historical text, but the content is fairly advanced for my middle grade readers. I specifically requested it for the purpose of including portions of it when we read Ruta Sepetys' Salt to the Sea.

Archaeology is one of the ways in which we learn from the past, and this discipline is highlighted in David Gibbins new book "A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks." Gibbins is a gifted diver as well as historian, and all of those talents are put together to make a highly informative book in which he takes a look at 12 leading shipwrecks and what they have taught us about the world from the contents of those wrecks.

Let me start out this review with some context! I minored in history in college and am very interested in shipwrecks and how they really function like time capsules in terms of information about time periods. I have been to 4-5 ship/shipwreck centered museums and actively seek them out whenever possible because I think they're so cool. I feel like I'm more interested in a topic like this than most people.

And... I honestly found this book to be pretty dry (pun intended!) I understand that it's supposed to be a history of the world (no pressure) kept feeling like the chapters were so long and unengaging. The author is clearly an expert in European shipwrecks and I appreciated his asides from his own experiences on dives. And that for me was by far the most interesting part of the book. Understandably, the author didn't work on all of the shipwrecks featured in the books. Even on the ones that he did, there were usually only little asides about his experiences. My favorite chapter was the one that really got into the author's experiences on the dives! And that was only one out of twelve!

Another issue is that this is supposed to be a history of THE WORLD in twelve shipwrecks, and a lot of cultures don't have ships OR don't have ships that sink and are able to give us enough archaeological evidence to give us a whole chapter. Or maybe there are! Canoes, kayaks, and other boats used by North American Indigenous tribes are mentioned, but none have their own chapter. The only ship that had anything to do with Africa was a Dutch slave ship. I think that there was effort to include shipwrecks outside of Europe, but they few, far between, and didn't have as much engaging context as the other ships. The author clearly specializes in European shipwrecks, so I'm not surprised to see more chapters based on his experiences. And, again, the ones where he had a personal tie were the most interesting to me. But if it's a history of the WORLD in twelve shipwrecks, I feel like this didn't represent the world-level diversity.

This book is clearly well researched and the author is clearly an expert. However, I think that the scope was wrong for this kind of book. I think it may have worked better for me if it only focused on the part of the world where the author had experiences on the dives and can tie it better into the greater historical context. As it was, most of the chapters focused on Western ships and with such a Western focus rubbed me the wrong way.
I feel like it's too much to try to do engaging, personal content AND find shipwrecks that represent the whole world AND give a history of the world along the way AND do each part of it well.

Overall, this book didn't really work for me. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3 because I did enjoy some of the personal asides from the author and found some of the content engaging. If you're really into shipwrecks and aren't looking for a comprehensive history of the world, give it a read! Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the eARC of this book, my thoughts are my own!

This was an original and exciting way to learn about History. I have always been a fan of archeology and I was drawn to this book because of the richness not only of the subject matter but the thrill of underwater discovery. I loved that this book shared not just the shiny objects that I see in a museum but their full story. That of the people who on the ships before they wrecked, those who often spend years looking for the wreck itself, and then the dangers of the actual excavation itself. This makes this items in museum so read and much more precious because I know the full story.

This is a wonderful book as a gift for any hosts buff or future archeologists. I will be buying a copy of this for my own library and I can't wait to see all the inserts that my galley proof didn't have.

Thanks you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC that I volunteered for

I wanted to read this one, but I am unable to download the book because it is unfortunately archived.

This is a neat premise for a historical nonfic, though it's not the only one. I wish this book either went into greater detail about the shipwrecks themselves and the exploring of them, or less detail about the historical minutiae and context--like it was imbalanced. Otherwise, Gibbins presents the reader with 12 nuggets of history from around the world, and it's fascinating to see how different regions influenced each other or developed independently in a time when travel so slow and dangerous and long. This book would be a clever gift for history buffs.

Thank you to St Martins Press and NetGalley for an e-arc to read and review voluntarily.

I was captivated by the idea of looking at human history through the lens of shipping, exploration, conquest, and travel. For me, however, the presentation of each example was too dry. I enjoy nonfiction, and history especially, but this one didn’t engage me the way I’d hoped.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with this free ARC in return for my honest review.

Archaeology is one of the ways in which we learn from the past, and this discipline is highlighted in David Gibbins new book "A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks." Gibbins is a gifted diver as well as historian, and all of those talents are put together to make a highly informative book in which he takes a look at 12 leading shipwrecks and what they have taught us about the world from the contents of those wrecks.
From the discovery of a bronze age ship that was plying the waters off of England in mid 1500 BC, to a shipwreck that occurred in 1941, the author takes us on a historical journey in which we learn as much if not more about history than we do about the wrecks themselves. How does one learn about the past? Through writings, paintings, sometimes word-of-mouth stories, but archaeology fills in a lot of the gaps and can tell us with greater precision, what was occurring at a specific point in history. There's no bias in the artifacts found in a shipwreck, and while not a complete picture of the world is found on a shipwreck, it does give us a microcosm of the world and given has done a fantastic job of documenting this. Divided into 12 individual chapters, this is the book that is filled with detail and can be read one chapter at a time. You could put it down because the next chapter is a completely different shipwreck having nothing to do with the prior discoveries. But if you have the time and the patience to read this book, you will marvel at how the contents of a boat can either affirm or change the way we think and how we look at matters. Some may ask how were they able to date a shipwreck to the mid 1500's BC. some artifacts may have been carbonated, but they also use a fascinating technique, called dendrology and are able to determine the age of the ship by the age of wood, and they can even tell us where the wood came from by using something like wood DNA! I was flabbergasted as I read so many of these stories. We discover an amphora mound outside of Rome that contains millions of pieces of discarded pottery from the height of the Roman Empire. Having been to Rome numerous times, that's not one of the highlights that they always show us, yet it is fascinating as the Colosseum itself. The amount and quantities of wine and olive oil brought to Rome or exported from Rome staggers the imagination and and from the cargo we get to realize how literate the people were in Roman times because they were manifests, markings and all of which had to have been read in order to make sure things were delivered to the right location. From the earliest of times we receive the international flavor of trade as those early shipwrecks have had their contents and artifacts traced too many locations in Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. it's mind-boggling. We also realize at one point that emperor Justinian was basically creating prefab churches. At the time the Roman Empire was based in Constantinople, Justinian was having marble columns, and altars mass produced, and then taken by boat to different ports in the Roman world where they were taken off the boat and assembled to create a new church. when you think of it, it's absolutely amazing that a boat that sailed in the Roman Empire was able to hold an excess of 100 tons of marble! There were so many little facts that I can't list them, but they make each and every chapter unique including the discovery on the HMS Terror, about to sit out to find the Northwest passage and which now rests beneath the sea and can only be investigated by using cameras, but the cameras bring us pictures the help us re-create the life and times of that shipwreck and has expanded our knowledge.
Now many people may find this book hard to read, and it certainly is not easy, but it is one that is worthwhile. As I said chapter by chapter read by bit and he will see a world of history that has been discovered and interpreted through these 12 shipwrecks. It's a marvelous journey, and there's probably no better person than David Gibbins to be our host!

As someone who has a degree in Maritime Studies (essentially maritime cultural anthropology paired with nautical archaeology) this was such a great read. Some of the wrecks are classic I learned in school, the Mary Rose, the Ulubruun, etc, but others were new to me and reignited my love for wrecks. Each section focuses on a wreck, its history, connections, scientific investigation, and impact on today’s historical understanding. If you’ve ever wanted to explore the watery depths of history, this is for you.

I'm a bit of a history geek. I read about it. Watch documentaries about it. Even studied it in college. There's just something about the past that calls to me. How did we get to where we are in modern times? What was it like to live in other eras? How did we learn and discover so much about medicine, mathematics, philosophy, the Universe, physics....humanity itself? I just find it all so fascinating.

I've read hundreds of books about history in general, historical events, famous people and places.... I love it when I discover a new-to-me author who surprises me. And this book definitely surprised me.

Telling history through a progression of shipwrecks through time. Wow. What an interesting concept! I knew when I read the blurb for this book that I needed to read it. And, while I'm glad I did, the follow through was a bit below expectations.

I love the concept of this book. From pre-history through to sunken WWII U-boats, Gibbons picked out 12 interesting shipwrecks and used them as waypoints through history. But I found the presentation a bit dry and like a rote recitation of general facts rather than an interesting dive into these wrecks, the eras they came from, and what they can tell us about the people who lived in those eras.

Did I find the information interesting? Yes. Did I appreciate his choices for wrecks to feature. Yes, again. Did I enjoy reading this book? No, not really.

History can be presented in a way that makes it pop from the page and become engaging, interesting and intriguing. Gibbons' writing did not give me that feeling. I felt like I was in a history lecture given by the professor nobody wants to get -- the class everyone dreads. Like the English professor I had in college that made me loath Shakespeare with a passion because he was so incredibly boring that it just killed any enjoyment or learning I could have gleaned from his class.

That sounds harsh. It's not meant that way. The concept is wonderful. The history is amazing.

But the writing....is dry and boring.

I thought maybe I was just expecting too much. So I peeked at other reviews, and I see that lots of other readers agree with me. So, this is my honest review.

Great concept. I can tell the author is knowledgeable. But the book is boring. There's no life in the words. I will gladly read a future book by this author if he puts some spark in his style....puts some light in the words he is sharing with readers.

This just off as dull. I'm giving this 3/5 stars based on the creative concept and the wrecks he chose to feature. But the actual presentation could have been so much more engaging and interesting.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from St. Martin's Press. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**