<div><i>Reliance</i> was a yacht like no other, built in 1903, the peak of the age of sail. A marvel of her time, <i>Reliance's</i> mast towered 196 feet above the water, with sails stretching 202 feet from the bowsprit to the boom's end. Many said <i>Reliance</i>, carrying more sail than any boat before or since, was simply too dangerous to sail, but the stakes were awesome: The America's Cup in 1903 was more than a gentleman's game; it was an all-or-nothing contest between two great rivals, rivals, Britain and America, with all the intensity of the later race into space.<br><br>Behind <i>Reliance</i> was a gallery of American greats. There was Nathaniel Herreshoff, perhaps our greatest yacht designer, also known as the Wizard of Bristol. And there were the robber barons who made America, men like J. P. Morgan and John Rockefeller. Such men spent<br>hundreds of thousands of dollars to win the America's Cup. On the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Lipton, scrappy founder of the Lipton tea and grocery empire, put his personal fortune behind the construction of an equally bold challenger, his <i>Shamrock</i>.<br><br>From conception to construction, through hair-raising sea trials--two men died in separate incidents testing the yachts--to the grand finale of a race like no other, author Christopher Pastore brings to life this most beautiful and dangerous vessel, as well as the hearts it won and the hearts it broke. It is simply one of the most exciting sea tales ever told.<br></div>