One of the nice perks of a job at a nautical magazine are the occasional books that come across our desks, in search of a little print love. Many are worthy and we do what we can but, recently, we received Flammarion's gorgeous boxed photography book, simply titled The Sea: An Anthology of Maritime Photography Since 1843. It is beautifully packaged, of course, but the range of photography it contains is dazzling. From an 1843 photo of the harbor of Rouen by William Henry Fox Talbot, whose early experiments were known as "photogenic drawings," to modern photography by artists Thomas Ruff, Elger Esser, and Andreas Gursky. The Sea comprehensively laps the shores of time with photos that document, celebrate, interpret, and eulogize. Arranged in sections that examine the sea and its people, adventure at sea, ships as art, life at sea, and artistic interpretations of the sea, this book seems to magically capture not just every mood the shifting oceans evoke in us, but to chart the sea's glorious endurance as we have scrambled around trying to capture it through various techniques, epochs, tragedies, and passages. Here are a few of our staff favorites with comments, as well as words about the sea that will probably endure at least as long as these photos, if not as long (we hope!) as their inspiration. -Mary South