Sextant: A Young Man's Daring Sea Voyage and the Men Who Mapped the World's Oceans - Softcover

"Beneath the book's calm surface churns a melancholic message about how the comfort of technology -- symbolized by the sextant's almighty antagonist, GPS -- has turned our gaze away from the stars."--Entertainment Weekly

"As lovingly and painstakingly constructed as the navigators' one irreplaceable talisman, David Barrie's exquisite book is a hymn to a now-vanishing feature of maritime life, a finely-chased reminder of just how much we all owe to that one small piece of apparatus"--SIMON WINCHESTER, author of the New York Times bestselling The Men Who United the States and The Professor and the Madman

"Even for armchair adventurers with no sea legs to speak of, Barrie's Sextant is a compelling read."--Shelf Awareness

This fascinating and adventure-filled history of the navigation tool that measures the angle between a celestial object and the horizon, allowing sailors to pinpoint their exact location at sea, chronicles its development and how it saved many a navigator. 50,000 first printing.