Simon Winchester is the prolific polymath whose books include THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, KRAKATOA and THE MEN WHO UNITED THE STATES. In PACIFIC, he tackles a gargantuan subject --- 64 million square miles of it --- in the period between 1950 and 2014. He chose the first date because before January 1, 1950 “the atmosphere was radiochemically pure,” but after that “it was sullied” as a result of the massive numbers of nuclear tests conducted in the area beginning in 1945. That date is now known as “BP,” or Before Present. The end date, he admits, was when his manuscript was due. If that seems arbitrary, so do many of his choices. This will frustrate some readers and delight others, but his fascination with so many topics, all of which are handled deftly and often with personal anecdotes (has the man been everywhere?), won this reader over.

Winchester’s rationale for tackling the history of an expanse of water in this timeframe is that, with the rise of Asia and the importance of what transpires between the east and west, “The future, in short, is what the Pacific Ocean is coming to symbolize.” 

"[Winchester's] fascination with so many topics, all of which are handled deftly and often with personal anecdotes (has the man been everywhere?), won this reader over."

A recent book by Bill Bryson, ONE SUMMER: America, 1927, tells the social history of the U.S. in the early 20th century through that brief time lens. Not everything began or ended then, but a nice epilogue satisfied the reader’s curiosity about people and events described in the book. Winchester has trouble sticking to his 65-year time frame, and his claim that he is focusing on 10 “singular events” is also a bit of a stretch. In one chapter, “Farewell, My Friends and Foes,” for instance, he begins with the sinking of the RMS Queen Elizabeth in Hong Kong in 1972, but manages to touch on the Viet Minh uprising in Saigon in 1945 and the subsequent collapse of the British and French empires in the ensuing years, along with the U.S.’s expanding involvement in Southeast Asia. He ends with the 1997 handover of Hong Kong by the British to the Chinese. There is an internal logic to it, but the story is anything but linear. 

Which is not to say that the book isn’t absorbing reading. In one chapter, Winchester takes on typhoons, cyclones, El Niño and the Southern Oscillation, and everything else that the Pacific --- “the generator of the world’s weather” –- churns up on a regular basis. In another, he talks of the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo and the subsequent international crisis that it prompted. Along the way, he talks of the history that divided the isthmus, his own visits to South and North Korea, and his attempts to host a picnic in the DMZ that divides the two countries.

And a big theme of this book is how the “Fragile and Uncertain Sea,” as he names one chapter, is affected by man’s exploitation and despoliation of it. That is a subject he returns to frequently, showing how many ecosystems are at risk from a myriad of predators.

By the end of this doorstopper of a book (almost 500 pages), Winchester has succeeded in demonstrating the importance of the Pacific to our modern-day world –-- the last chapter deals with military one-upmanship between the super powers in the South China Sea and elsewhere --- but he has not quite persuaded readers that the book holds together as a narrative. In some ways, he’s proven that the Pacific is so vast and the lands around it so disparate that there is little commonality besides the body of water that they share. But he’s also shown that we all have a stake in keeping that water clean, accessible --- and peaceful --- for the sake of the generation to come.