A review by librarianonparade
Close to Shore:Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916 by Michael Capuzzo

4.0

I zipped through this in less than a day, I couldn't put it down - which I guess is the mark of a good book. It's about the 1916 shark attacks off the coast of New Jersey that gripped the entire United States and were the inspiration for Peter Benchley's Jaws. It starts quite slowly, more than a quarter of the book goes by before the first attack, but it's very good at 'setting the scene', so to speak. The actual exploration of the attacks is very well-written, dramatic and graphic, but it works just as well describing the America of the time, a society teetering on the brink between the old Edwardian Gilded Age and the new modern age. It does very well trying to explore why the shark came so close to shore, seventeen miles inland up tidal creeks at one point, what was prompting the attacks on humans and how the scientific community's disbelief that sharks were dangerous exacerbated the danger.