In the Company of Dolphins

Bestselling author Irwin Shaw's lighthearted travelogue follows his family's vacation sailing from St. Tropez to Venice in the 1960s. As a boy, Irwin Shaw stared out across Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay and dreamed of owning a boat and sailing the oceans wide. Decades later, he determined that chartering a yacht was better than having no boat at all. With his wife and son, Shaw then set out to mosey about the Mediterranean, guided by a Scottish captain, his wife and daughter, and a Greek cabin boy. From St. Tropez to Naples, and across the Adriatic to Dubrovnik and up to Venice, it was the trip of a lifetime, its only fault being that, eventually, it would have to end. Written in 1964, this travel memoir is a portrait of a bygone age, when the sun-soaked Mediterranean was still emerging from the shadow of World War II and "e;vacation"e; truly meant detaching oneself from the world. Featuring cameos by legendary authors such as Francoise Sagan and James Jones, this endearing memoir is the next best thing to a Mediterranean cruise.