Brilliant Beacons

February 29, 2016
Historian and maritime expert Dolin (When America First Met China) sheds light on the proverbial “beacon in the night” in this meticulous look at American lighthouses, starting with the creation of the Boston Lighthouse in 1716 and following the narrative up to the present. The history of these fixtures, as Dolin presents it, is as much about “the farsighted colonies that built the first lighthouse on the East Coast
to welcome commerce safely to their shores” as it is “a history of government ineptitude and international competition” and “a history of lighting innovation.” In tracking social, political, cultural, and technological threads, he creates a fascinating picture of American life and its relationship with the sea over the centuries. Dolin also chronicles the slow decline of an American institution and the steps taken to preserve the remaining lighthouses in a world that has mostly moved beyond them, he continues to make the case for their existence. His passion is on full display: “They truly are national treasures worthy of awe and admiration.” Dolin’s style, which is engaging yet dense, makes this a slow but rewarding read, and anyone studying lighthouses will find this an indispensable resource. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary.

January 15, 2016
A fine history of lighthouses, "among the most beloved and romanticized structures in the American landscape." The author of other masterly works on key aspects of American history and growth (Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America, 2010, etc.), Dolin here presents a thoughtful, straightforward chronicle of the American lighthouse, from the earliest, completed in 1716 at Little Brewster, in Boston Harbor, as a harbinger of burgeoning Colonial maritime growth, to the death of the last civilian keeper--at the Coney Island Lighthouse--in 2003, Nearly all the biggest cities in the Colonies were ports, and little by little, the harbors at Rhode Island (Beavertail Point), New York (Sandy Hook), and South Carolina (Charleston's Morris Island) were constructed in quick succession. Wars wreaked havoc on lighthouses, as they became military targets and were often dismantled--e.g., Sandy Hook was seized by the British during the Revolution, becoming a magnet for loyalist refugees; the Key West, Florida, lighthouse, seized by the Union in 1861, provided the Union naval forces lighted guidance through the dangerous south Florida waters during the entire war. Throughout the book, Dolin ties together important strands to the lighthouse story: the federal government took over from the states the building and upkeep of lighthouses with the Lighthouse Act of 1789, indicating the importance of the institution yet also putting the oversight at the "rule of ignorant and incompetent men," such as the penny-pinching, shortsighted, long-running auditor Stephen Pleasonton. He relied on the old-fashioned "magnifying and reflecting lantern" of Winslow Lewis rather than the state-of-the-art European Fresnel lens (created by French inventor Augustin-Jean Fresnel), adopted finally by all lighthouses through the Lighthouse Board in 1851. Dolin also weaves in the heroic stories of lighthouse keepers (men and women), and along with engineering feats, there are also fantastic tales of kamikaze birds and other instances of wild nature coming up against these man-made structures. A delightful journey with excellent sketches, renderings, and resources for museums and organizations.

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February 1, 2016

Hailing lighthouses as "national treasures" that "literally lit the way" for U.S. economic growth and maritime safety, independent historian Dolin (When America First Met China) establishes lighthouses and their keepers to be admirable and worth studying. Much of this book documents the evolving design and management of lighthouses since Boston built the first in 1716. Other chapters describe the men and women who battled tempests, loneliness, and budget cuts to construct and operate hundreds of lighthouses nationwide. Integrated into this traditional history are colorful tales featuring wrecked ships, giant waves, dauntless keepers, tightfisted bureaucrats, rampaging armies, and harrowing rescues. These sometimes star female keepers such as Ida Lewis, who plucked a total of 18 survivors from storm-tossed seas. Even libraries make a cameo--federal agencies once managed about 500 mobile libraries, lending books to isolated keepers across America. VERDICT Dolin delivers the most thorough and absorbing study of American lighthouses in over 40 years, since Francis Ross Holland Jr.'s America's Lighthouses, filling an essential niche for historians and lighthouse enthusiasts. [See Prepub Alert, 10/26/15.]--Michael Rodriguez, Hodges Univ. Lib., Naples, FL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2016
Nowadays converted into museums and inns, America's sentinels of the seacoasts and Great Lakes numbered in the hundreds, employed thousands, and accumulated a legacy of history and lore that Dolin (When America First Met China, 2012) crafts into a marvelously interesting and entertaining narrative. The story begins three hundred years ago, when Boston built the first colonial lighthouse; its destruction in 1776 by the British portended incidents during the War of 1812, the Seminole War, and the Civil War in which lighthouses stood as military targets. A skillful dramatist of such events, Dolin is as good a portraitist of characters who built and kept lighthouses, none more significant than Stephen Pleasonton, a U.S. Treasury bureaucrat who, from 1820 to 1852, superintended lighthouses in a federal program established by one of the first laws made under the Constitution. Try as Dolin does to be sympathetic to Pleasonton's tenure, he cannot avoid damning it because of Pleasonton's recalcitrance in adopting the most important innovation in lighthouse history, the Fresnel lens (see Theresa Leavitt's A Short, Bright Flash, 2014). Dolin moves forward to chronicle the construction of numerous impressive towers in wildly windswept, picturesque settings. These classic lighthouses, featured in the book's many illustrations, and the keepers' tales attached to them exert an ineffably romantic attraction richly conveyed in Dolin's admirable presentation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)