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I have read ~25 books on Kindle so far, and this book had more formatting errors than all of the others combined. The editor did not salvage the book either.3/4 of the book has nothing to do with the expedition or the wreck. There is also an assumption that the reader has a good understanding of the French political history including Napoleon and the Restoration of the Bourbons. There is no logical order to the book.
The Book:Wow. Almost every numeric date was messed up. (I do not).I expected a book about a shipwreck, and I was very dissapointed.The Format:I purchased this in Kindle format. This was the worst written book I have ever suffered through.
The writer constantly jumps around in both time and place. ( "1 808" instead of "1808", "July 618 16" instead of July 6, 1816)Don't waste your money. The story is facinating, but the writing is incredibly bad. Most of the pages are wasted trying in vain to explain French politics, art, and other trivial topics.
I was struck, page after page, by the similarities between the incompetence of the French officials in choosing expedition personnel and the Bush administrations handling of the Katrina aftermath. I read this book last year and thoroughly enjoyed every word. -Tim-La Mesa, California Do yourself a big favor and add this one to your reading list. The author does a superb job of placing you on the raft and in the middle of the action. The understanding of this event and it's underlying causes is a very important lesson.
First Miles talks about the "main characters", and how they became involved with the journey. I first became interested with the Medusa in an Art history class and began researching it on my own. I recommend anyone interested in the wreck of the Medusa to get into this book. How the whole incident unfolded out at sea and what happened to each "life boat" and their passengers definatly kept my attention. I saw in an issue of ARTNEWS that this book came out and I immediately found it on amazon. I like how the test is displayed.
Author Jonathan Miles spends as much time on French politics of the period as he does on the shipwreck. There's too many characters that come and go briefly, and too many shifts in direction. "Duh.," you might say.
He carefully describes how the incompetence of the Medusa captain led to its wreck off the African coast, and he details the horrific ordeals - including cannibalism - of those who had to abandon ship. "The Wreck of the Medusa" needs some focus. But by the middle of the book, the wreck and the survivors' ordeals are over, and the book seems adrift for the rest.
I just finished "The Wreck of the Medusa," yet I am stuck on a pretty basic question: What is this book about. And he spends one section looking at the slave trade, which had nothing to do with the Medusa.Miles is clearly a thorough researcher, having dug through diaries, old books and newspapers, and other records to put together this book.
"Look at the cover: It's about the wreck of the sailing ship Medusa in 1816."Well, yes, it's partly about the wreck, but the book skitters across several other subjects, too. He also includes a biography of the painter Theodore Gericault (who painted "The Raft of the Medusa").
The Stern Librarian (I am the daughter of a daughter of a sailor). Although there is horror to spare in the details of the shipwreck, I was most moved by the story of Gericault's love affair with his uncle's wife and of the unhappy fate of their abandoned child. After reading this book, the Stern Librarian found it necessary to amend her Amazon List of "books to keep you on the sea after finishing Patrick O'Brian." Overlapping in time with the Aubrey-Maturin series, but telling a French story, this book is a fascinating tale of what results when a Navy rewards political favoritism over skill. The story of the wreck of the Medusa off the coast of Senegal is artfully related, and the author alternates between details of the tragedy and the creation of Gericault's painting of its desperate survivors, which today hangs in the Louvre.
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