Martin W Sandler

Describes what happened when a slave ship that was captured by pirates in 1717, packed with plunder, was sunk by a brutal storm, and the expedition to locate the wreck and what was uncovered.

Though barely known today, these are major historical stories, from Ziryab, an eighth-century black slave whose influence on music, cuisine, fashion, and manners still reverberates, to Cahokia, a twelfth-century city north of the Rio Grande, which at its zenith contained a population estimated to have been as high as 40,000 (more than any contemporary European city), to the worst peacetime maritime disaster ever, the explosion and sinking of the Sultana...

Highlights the work of 12 photographers whose photos have changed the nation.