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Brilliant beacons : a history of the American lighthouse / Eric Jay Dolin.

by Dolin, Eric Jay.

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Liveright Publishing Corporation, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company, [2016]

United States. Bureau of Light-Houses -- History.

United States. Lighthouse Service -- History.

Lighthouses -- United States -- History.

Lighthouse keepers -- United States -- Biography.

9780871406682 (hc.)

xv, 541 pages, 6 leaves of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 455-514) and index.

Colonial lights -- Casualties of war -- Lights of a new nation -- Economy above all -- Europeans take the lead -- The "rule of ignorant and incompetent men" -- Brighter lights -- "Everything being recklessly broken" -- From board to service -- Keepers and their lives -- Lighthouse heroes -- Marvels of engineering and construction -- Of birds and eggs -- A cruel wind -- The new keepers -- Epilogue -- Lighthouse organizations -- Lighthouse museums.

"Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America's lighthouse system from its earliest days, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation's hardscrabble coastlines. Beginning with "Boston Light," America's first lighthouse, Dolin shows how the story of America, from colony to regional backwater, to fledging nation, and eventually to global industrial power, can be illustrated through its lighthouses. As the nation expanded, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so too did the coastlines in need of illumination, from New England to the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, the Pacific Coast all the way to Alaska. Each of these beacons tell its own story of political squabbling, technological advancement, engineering marvel, and individual derring-do. In rollicking detail, Dolin treats readers to a memorable cast of characters, from the penny-pinching Treasury official Stephen Pleasonton, who hamstrung the country's efforts to adopt the revolutionary Fresnel lens, to the indomitable Katherine Walker, who presided so heroically over New York Harbor as keeper at Robbins Reef Lighthouse that she was hailed as a genuine New York City folk hero upon her death in 1931. He also animates American military history from the Revolution to the Civil War and presents tales both humorous and harrowing of soldiers, saboteurs, Civil War battles, ruthless egg collectors, and, most important, the lighthouse keepers themselves, men and women who often performed astonishing acts of heroism in carrying out their duties. In the modern world of GPS and satellite-monitored shipping lanes, Brilliant Beacons forms a poignant elegy for the bygone days of the lighthouse, a symbol of American ingenuity that served as both a warning and a sign of hope for generations of mariners"--Provided by publisher.

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