Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in An Age of Innocence

Five CDs, 6 hrs.Read by Len CariouFour deaths. One maiming. One shark. . . In mesmerizing detail, journalist Michael Capuzzo’s CLOSE TO SHORE recounts the dramatic true story of a series of shark attacks that occurred along the New Jersey shore in July 1916 — resulting in the largest shark hunt in history, and the end of Americans’ naivete about the dangers of the sea. Anchored by harrowing and graphic recreations of a rogue Great White Shark’s attacks on five swimmers in two beach towns —as well as in a farming community eleven miles inland — the narrative examines the behavior of the ocean’s greatest predator and the lives and worldview of pre-World War I Americans. The novelistic narrative evokes both the chilling specter of sharks and the rich historical backdrop of Gilded Age America, an era when Americans were just beginning to swim in the ocean, and the Jersey shore, thanks to the railroads, was coming into its own as a playground for America’s new leisure class. Woven throughout is the theme of how these shark attacks metaphorically marked the end of an "innocent" age in America when a ship was considered unsinkable and a shark, experts believed, hadn't the jaw strength to hurt a man.Based on in-depth archival research into accounts of the attacks from 1916 newspapers and science journals and existing interviews with victims’ relatives as well as research and reporting on the social and cultural currents of the era and on what we have learned about sharks in the intervening decades, CLOSE TO SHORE paints vivid portraits of individuals ranging from tourists, local citizens and shore developers to scientists, shark experts and hunters. Capuzzo intersperses the spellbinding narrative with fascinating insights on shark behavior and on the evolving human-shark relationship, incorporating tales of shark attacks that occurred elsewhere and at other times to create a timeless account of our relationship with man’s last natural predator.