Italia, Italia

NICHOLS, Peter

Garzanti

Examines the current status of the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, illuminating its modern history, leaders, ideology, and role in the world today

The Pope's Divisions: The Roman Catholic Church Today

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Henry Holt Co.

Evolution's Captain is the story of a visionary but now forgotten English naval officer but for whom the "Darwinian Revolution" would never have occurred. When Captain Robert FitzRoy, the twenty-six-year-old captain of the H.M.S. Beagle, set out for Tierra del Fuego in the fall of 1831, he invited a young naturalist to accompany him. That twenty-two-year-old gentleman was Charles Darwin, and perhaps no single voyage in history had a greater impact on how we would come to understand the world -- in both religious and scientific terms.
When the Beagle's first captain committed suicide while at sea in 1828, he was replaced by a young naval officer of a new mold. Robert FitzRoy was the most brilliant and scientific sea captain of his age. He used the Beagle, a survey vessel, as a laboratory for the new field of the natural sciences. But his plan to bring four "savages" home to England to civilize them as Christian gentlefolk backfired when scandal loomed over their sexual misbehavior at the Walthamstow Infants School. FitzRoy needed to get them out of England fast, and thus was born the second and most famous voyage of the Beagle.
FitzRoy feared the loneliness of another long voyage -- with madness in his own family, he was haunted by the fate of the Beagle's previous captain -- so for company he took with him the young amateur naturalist Charles Darwin. Like FitzRoy, Darwin believed, at the beginning of the voyage, in the absolute word of the Bible and the story of man's creation. The two men spent five years circling the globe together, but by the end of their voyage they had reached startlingly different conclusions about the origins of the natural world.
In naval terms, the voyage was a stunning scientific success. But FitzRoy, a fanatical Christian, was horrified by the heretical theories Darwin began to develop. As these began to influence the profoundest levels of religious and scientific thinking in the nineteenth century, FitzRoy's knowledge that he had provided Darwin with the vehicle for his sacrilegious ideas propelled him down an irrevocable path to suicide.
This true story -- part biography, part sea drama, and a subtle study of one of the defining moments in the history of science -- reads like the finest historical fiction. It is a chronicle of the remarkable chain of events without which Darwin would most likely have lived and died an obscure English country parson with a fondness for collecting beetles.

Evolution's Captain: The Dark Fate of the Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around the World

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Harper

This is the story of the man without whom the name Charles Darwin might be unknown to us today. That man was Captain Robert FitzRoy, who invited the 22-year-old Darwin to be his companion on board the Beagle . This is the remarkable story of how a misguided decision by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle , precipitated his employment of a young naturalist named Charles Darwin, and how the clash between FitzRoys fundamentalist views and Darwins discoveries led to FitzRoys descent into the abyss. One of the great ironies of history is that the famous journey—wherein Charles Darwin consolidated the earth-rattling origin of the species discoveries—was conceived by another man: Robert FitzRoy. It was FitzRoy who chose Darwin for the journey—not because of Darwins scientific expertise, but because he seemed a suitable companion to help FitzRoy fight back the mental illness that had plagued his family for generations. Darwin did not give FitzRoy solace; indeed, the clash between the two mens opposing views, together with the ramifications of Darwins revelations, provided FitzRoy with the final unendurable torment that forced him to end his own life.

Evolution's Captain: The Story of the Kidnapping That Led to Charles Darwin's Voyage Aboard the Beagle

Historical

Harper-perennial

On April 22, 1969 -- three months before Neil Armstrong's walk on the Moon -- the world watched as a small sailboat came ashore at Falmouth, England, completing a voyage of astonishing courage and endurance that would forever alter our ongoing adventure with the sea. Ten months earlier, nine very different men had set off in small and ill-equipped boats, determined to do the impossible: sail around the world alone and without stopping, to win the race dubbed the Golden Globe. Only one of the nine would cross the finish line -- to fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the rewards would be despair, madness, and death.
The men were inspired by Sir Francis Chichester, who had become a national hero in Britain for stopping only once (in Australia) while sailing alone around the world. Suddenly what had seemed impossible-to circumnavigate the world alone and nonstop -- now appeared within reach. For nine driven men -- among them Robin Knox-Johnston, a young Merchant Marine captain; Bernard Moitessier, a French mystic; Donald Crowhurst, a brilliant, troubled electrical engineer; and Chay Blyth, an Army sergeant who had rowed across the Atlantic in 1966 but did not know how to saila gauntlet had been thrown down, a challenge they found themselves overwhelmingly and inexplicably compelled to accept.
Though the Golden Globe race was the progenitor of (and inspiration for) the Vendee Globe and the Race of the Millennium, its participants had more in common with Captain Cook and Ferdinand Magellan than with today's high-tech sailor. There was no satellite navigational system, no onboard computer, no cell phone or fax line connecting them to the world beyond -- or to possible rescuers. They survived on their wits and ingenuity, navigating by sextant, sun, and stars. Their most sophisticated technology -- when it worked -- was a radio.
A Voyage for Madmen is a remarkable story of individuals against the sea, of men driven by their dreams and demons to live for months on end in a cabin roughly the size of a Volkswagen. To succeed they must endure the harshest of weather; stave off unimaginable loneliness in the forbidding Southern Ocean; navigate unassisted through the world's most treacherous waters off the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn; and, time and again, face -- alone -- those fateful moments when a single decision could mean the difference between life and death.
With a novelist's eye for detail and a seaman's knowledge of the joys and perils of blue water, Peter Nichols has crafted a classic tale of endurance and adventure -- a fitting chronicle of how these obsessed sailors, "in their puny and inadequate boats, undertook the last great maritime feat...and how, one by one, the sea cut them down."

A Voyage For Madmen

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.
In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones, satellite dishes, and electronic positioning systems. A Voyage for Madmen is a tale of sailors driven by their own dreams and demons, of horrific storms in the Southern Ocean, and of those riveting moments when a split-second decision means the difference between life and death.

A Voyage for Madmen

Examines the current status of the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, illuminating its modern history, leaders, ideology, and role in the world today

The Pope's Divisions

Penguin??Books

In a meditation on sailing, the sea, and the mysteries of love, the author chronicles his and his wife's voyage aboard a wooden boat across the Atlantic from the Caribbean to England, where his marriage foundered, and his return solo odyssey, which also became a journey of self-discovery. Reprint.

Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat

Travel

"Peter Nichols has crafted a terrifyingly relevant historical narrative...A terrific read." -Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In The Heart of the Sea In 1871, America's last fleet of whaling ships was destroyed in an arctic ice storm. Miraculously, 1,218 men, women and children survived, but the disaster was catastrophic at home. Oil and Ice is the story of one fateful whaling season that illuminates the unprecedented rise and devastating fall of America's first oil economy, and the fate of today's petroleum industry.

Oil & Ice: A Story of Arctic Disaster and the Rise and Fall of America's Last Whaling Dynasty

Business & Money

Economics

Penguin Publishing Group

Piedmont and the English.

Hugh Evelyn

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Books by NICHOLS, Peter