Around America

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Well-loved and greatly respected anchorman Walter Cronkite, now retired, invites any and all to embark with him as he travels all around America's magnificent coastline, savoring the natural wonders and relating tidbits of local history along the way. Readers couldn't ask for a better host.

Cronkite's initial journey, in his powered sailboat, the Wyntje, takes the reader along the country's Northeast shoreline, starting at picturesque Victorian-style Cape May, with its "painted ladies," at the southern tip of New Jersey. Heading north, he sails through New York Harbor, just managing to avoid an embarrassing collision with a 19th-century merchantman, the Wavertree. From there, the Wyntje continues around Long Island and up past Connecticut, Newport, Rhode Island, and Cape Cod (where he nearly runs aground), to an eventual encounter with the somewhat eccentric lobstermen of Maine.

The southeastern leg of the journey takes Cronkite all the way from a dock in North Carolina to Florida's Key West. Along the way, there are stopovers in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay (where he takes in the annual race of "skipjack" oyster boats), Norfolk, Virginia, and Roanoke Island (with its infamous "Lost Colony" mystery).

The Gulf Coast is next on the itinerary, as the Wyntje journeys from Florida's Everglades to the barrier beaches of Texas. Cronkite happily relates a great deal of local history as he passes along the coastline of Louisiana, including that of the Battle of New Orleans and the adventures of the pirate Jean Lafitte.

Finally, the anchorman caps his national excursion by sailing southward from Washington's Cape Flattery all the way down the Oregon and California coasts, passing through the harbors of San Francisco, Los Angeles (actually man-made), and San Diego.

All aboard for a wonderful trip -- and a great read. (Nicholas Sinisi)

Nicholas Sinisi is the Barnes&Noble.com Nonfiction Editor.

Readers of anchorman Cronkite's autobiography, A Reporter's Life, are well aware of his lifelong love of sailing. In this charming little book about his favorite pastime, Cronkite alludes to his own experience at the helm only when it provides a little comic relief—incidents of inelegant docking, for instance. For the most part, the book is Cronkite's anecdotal tour of the nation's coastline, from the rocky inlets of Maine to the natural harbor at San Diego, one of the few on the West Coast. The author's schoolboy affinity for historical facts is endearing. Along the way, he tells us that New York's British governor Lord Cornbury was a transvestite, and that "The Star-Spangled Banner," the poem Francis Scott Key conceived as he weathered the battle for Baltimore's Fort McHenry in a rowboat, took its melody from an old British tavern song. Moving tirelessly from one safe harbor to the next, the book eventually becomes a bit monotonous. It is Cronkite's enthusiasm—the belief that another marvel might lie around the bend—that makes this a satisfying read.
—James Sullivan

Library Journal

Around the country's perimeter with everyone's favorite newsman. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An easy-reading travelogue of the East, West, and Gulf Coasts, as seen from the deck of Cronkite's own sailboat. TV news veteran Cronkite divides his narrative into the sailing trips he's taken over the years—from New York to Maine, for example, or from the Florida Everglades to Corpus Christi, Texas. Along the way he displays an impressive amount of knowledge one might not assign to America's favorite newsman. First of all, he is an accomplished sailor. He knows well the dangerous, intricate tides of Hell Gate (the straits where the East River meets the Harlem River in New York City), and he admonishes West Coast sailors to begin their journeys south from Puget Sound after the spring rains but in time to reach Conception, California, before the storms hit in the fall. Second, he is quite a good armchair historian. He can roll off facts about every section of US coastline. Many know of Hilton Head, South Carolina, as a tourist destination: Cronkite's Hilton Head was the site of "history's greatest amphibious landing up until World War II," when during the Civil War, Union troops took a Confederate fort there and turned it into the headquarters of the federal Department of the South. Passing by the redwoods forests of northern California, he details the founding of Eureka in 1850, linking its lumber industry to the gold rush and the construction of ingenious docks on the sides of the Pacific Coast Mountains. Cronkite's account has a rhythm that will entrance some, lull others to sleep, and cause some arch-stylists to cringe. Each page averages about five paragraphs, most of them comprised of a single sentence. The reader therefore hops from one chunk of an idea to another,digesting each separately without the benefit of varying breaths. The pattern makes for an enjoyable, but ultimately predictable, read. Sailing buffs, history buffs, and Cronkite buffs, however, will find plenty to admire.