SIMON WINCHESTER'S

"PACIFIC"

Simon Winchester’s “Pacific” is an extraordinary book  providing an insightful, and informative examination of the region, people and cultures surrounding and affected by the largest body of water on the planet.

It contains histories of everything from the creation of the thirty eighth parallel identifying the division between North and South Korea, the invention of the transistor radio and subsequent creation of electronics giant, Sony Corporation to the evolution of the surfboard.

This fascinating narrative paints glorious panoramas of natural wonders and natural catastrophes while also revealing some of the inglorious bastards associated with many of the surrounding countries and cultures.

Winchester is successful in corralling the wealth of material about this oceanic behemoth. He chose a scattering of happenings each of which, to him, seemed to betoken some greater trend, and which might tell in microcosm a larger truth about the Pacific than the moments themselves suggest.

After scouring newspapers, history books, databases and academic papers, he was “buried under a blizzard of possibilities”.

He decides to begin his journey on January 1, 1950, which the scientific community designated as the “Year Zero”. “The choice of this date was scientifically elegant, logical and precise for reasons having to do with radio-carbon dating.

Winchester saw this date as the most appropriate, the dividing line between purity and impurity. For nearly all the carbon-14 dating pollution that was sent up into the skies and that created the concept of “present” and “before present (BP)…came as the result of explosions that occurred in the Pacific.

In the end, he chose ten singular events. He began “with the acceptance of a singular and distasteful reality: that the Pacific… is in fact…an atomic ocean. It’s where most of the world’s thermonuclear weapons have been tested.

Included in his narrative is the story of Bikini Island and of the hydrogen bombs tested there. He relates the tale of the arrogant, reckless scientists and power hungry, political administrations that influenced the nuclear testing, obliterating and displacing the lives of the people of Bikini.

He goes on to relate story after story illustrating how the surrounding islands, indigenous people, historic and current cultures, colonial powers and the sea itself is the most turbulent in the world.

“The Pacific Ocean is in serious environmental peril, ringed with nations undergoing immense internal change, is unimaginably busy with commerce, has come to be at the forefront of science and self discovery and is an expanse of sea that should be central to all our thoughts.

This book is an account of the modern Pacific: a pillar of hope on which for good or ill, we might construct humanity’s future.