Adventure, shipwreck, storms and survival on the high seas.

The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the OED's editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him.

In 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. But by the time they returned home, Zhu Di had lost control and China was turning inwards, leaving the records of their discoveries to be forgotten for centuries.

This book brings together all the work in a new field of physics, the chaos theory, an extension of classical mechanics. The author shows how computers have been able to help researchers, by mapping the whole plane of solutions of non-linear equations.

From the Vikings to Clarence Birdseye, the author introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs and fisherman, whose lives have been interwoven with the prolific fish. He chronicles the cod wars of the 16th and 20th centuries. He shows how the most profitable fish in history is faced with extinction.

The 'perfect storm' is a once-in-a-hundred-years combination: a high pressure system from the Great Lakes, running into storm winds over an Atlantic island - Sable Island - and colliding with a weather system from the Caribbean: Hurricane Grace. This work presents the story of that storm.