Sublime

Mike’s father, Leonard Shatzkin, introduced a different way to sell backlist in 1955, by which Doubleday automated backlist replenishment for the stores in response to inventory counts the reps reported after their visits. This technique propelled Doubleday from one of many publishers to an industry leader, particularly for backlist.

Meanwhile, a competitor of sorts had cropped up. On the west coast of Florida, perhaps inspired by Flagler’s notoriety, a man named Henry Plant had been buying up a series of existing narrow-gauge railroads with the stated intention of extending a line all the way from Tampa to Miami. Plant had also built a deep-water pier that transformed Tampa in

On August 3, 1804, Humboldt and Bonpland arrived at Bordeaux, causing a great commotion, since their death by yellow fever had been widely reported some time earlier. They had been gone five years. In addition to all their instruments and Humboldt’s journals and record books, they had brought with them “forty-two boxes, containing an herbal of six

After the pirates, the next group of entrepreneurs to come along was the wreckers—or gentleman pirates, depending on one’s point of view. These wreckers built observation towers on land from which they kept a close eye on the outlying shallow reefs, especially during storms. When they spotted a ship that had run aground, they sped to the scene, oft

the wrecking business was lucrative, so much so that it was not unknown for a captain to arrange a convenient wreck in advance. Once the cargo had been claimed and sold, the proceeds would be divided between the captain and the wreckers, with the owners left to fight it out with insurers, if they had any.

The French writer Stendhal, in his 1817 travelogue, Rome, Naples, and Florence, described