Mastering the Inland Seas offers a broad panorama of the conflicts, policies, and personalities that created the modern navigation system on the Great Lakes. Far more than just lighthouses, it draws in the political storms of antebellum America, the federal government's role, and the long-term impact of these encounters." - Matthew Lawrence Daley, Grand Valley State University
"Magnificently researched and written with clarity and high energy, Karamanski's Mastering the Inland Seas tells the hidden history of how generations of maritime peoples-from indigenous canoe paddlers to modern mariners-navigated and domesticated the watery wilderness of the Great Lakes." - Robert Michael Morrissey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign