Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I suppose in the age of Trump is it inevitable that everything gets politicized, even shipwrecks. This book is full of simplistic, anti-Republican political diatribes, many of which are completely idiotic and much that are not even related to the subject. When you approach your subject in such an unbalanced way you discredit your argument. By the end of the book she had left no left wing sacred cow unmentioned while avoiding any counter arguments. For example, in Ms Slade’s world Florida is a racist state, where Jim Crow is still alive and where the n-word is often heard. This despite the fact that 60 % of Florida residents were not even born in the state and it being extremely ethnically diverse. I live in white, backward eastern Kentucky and I don’t hear the n-word here. Is Florida really worse than eastern Kentucky? I highly doubt it. How was this even germane to what on in the bridge of the ship? She damns Ronald Reagan as being a free trader who destroyed blue collar America she then praises the protectionist Jones Act. No where did Ms Slade consider that maybe if there was competition from better run companies such as Maresk companies like TOTE Maritime would have either failed for improved their operation. She might have explored how the Jones Act keeps older, less seaworthy ships in operation making the US fleet old and dilapidated. Such arguments don’t fit in her narrow, bigoted worldview so they remain unexplored. She also spends too little time on the root cause of the accident, which is the completely avoidable action of Capitan Davidson sailing the ship into a hurricane. Yes the ship may have been old, overloaded, poorly maintained and incorrectly modified but had it not been sailed into a hurricane its crew would have made it safely to Puerto Rico. Was it really Davidson’s over reliance on the BVS weather routing system that caused him to sail into harm's way? Why does the shipping industry still rely on an anachronistic system where the Captain’s authority cannot be questioned? Is that even true in 2019? What contingencies do other shipping companies have for heavy weather and dealing with an irrational Capitan? These issues remain largely unexplored. Unfortunately, Slade is a product of an educational system that produces people like her with excellent writing skills but devoid of critical thinking skills. Maybe someone will write a thoroughly researched book that explores the issues of El Faro’s demise without all the political tripe. That would be a book worth reading.