The cruise ship market is a 30 billion-dollar industry, and in 2013 it is estimated that it will carry more than 20 million passengers; nor is there any sign of a slow down in the seven percent annual growth. What keeps the passengers coming in such huge numbers isn't the food, the ports or the entertainment. They come for the magnificent floating palaces themselves, the giants of the sea. In this new book, the author showcases the most influential cruise ships of the last three decades beginning with Royal Caribbean's ground-breaking Sovereign of the Seas. When she was launched in 1988 she was the largest passenger ship constructed since Cunard's Queen Mary entered service some 48 years earlier, and her entry into service sparked a fiercely competitive building boom that continues to this day. The reader is taken aboard thirty of the most spectacular ships to reveal how their innovative designs changed the landscape of modern cruising. By employing original and archival photographs, deck plans, cruise programmes, as well as the author's intimate knowledge of many of these vessels, a unique picture is built up of these great ships and it becomes clear that the true Golden Age of Cruising is not in some distant past but exists right now, and that its origins can be traced back to one ship, launched in 1988. A truly sumptuous and fascinating book for all those drawn to the world of the modern cruise ship. 250 colour photographs

アーロン・サンダースが描くのは、単なる巨大船舶の記録ではなく、人間の野心と技術の粋が結晶化した「動く宮殿」の叙事詩です。一九八八年のソブリン・オブ・ザ・シーズ号誕生を起点に、現代クルーズ界がいかにして真の黄金時代を築き上げたか。著者は緻密な設計図や資料を駆使し、冷徹な鋼鉄の巨体に熱き命を吹き込んでいます。 本書の白眉は、客船を単なる移動手段ではなく、それ自体が究極の目的地となる「物語の舞台」として捉え直した点にあります。三十隻の革新的な造形を巡る旅は、私たちが抱く豊かさへの根源的な憧憬を浮き彫りにするでしょう。ページをめくるたび、潮風と贅を尽くした空間の香りが立ち上るような、圧倒的なスケール感に魂が揺さぶられる一冊です。