Book 1: an island; the sea and the land; early mariners; Etruscans and Greeks; the island battlefield; Greeks, Phoenicians, and Etruscans; Persians and Greeks; ships and the men; the second round; after the war. Book 2: goddess and island; two sides of a Greek coin - Athens and Sparta; the Peloponnesian War; Greece and the East; Romans and Carthaginians; Romans and Greeks; the Roman Sea; portrait of a city; Romans, Jews and Christians;; Rome and Constantinople - the pendulum swings east; the navel of the sea. Book 3: the troubled sea; Byzantium and the sea; west and east; invasion of the Arabs; Arabs and Vikings; the Arabic centuries; Normans and Arabs; crusades; Knights of Saint John; the fall of Byzantium; the maritime republics; triumphs in the east and west; the Turkish Sea; Preveza, Malta, Lepanto. Book 4 Islands under the sun; Dutch, English, and Corsairs; Gibraltar; a ship-of-the-line; French and English; Napoleon and Nelson; after the war; islands and English; mid-Victorian; the great transformation; another century; peace - and war again; time and the ocean.