Woven through ""Lifeboat"" are good old-fashioned yarns and thrilling tales of adventure that will quicken the pulse of readers who have enjoyed the novels of Patrick O'Brian, ""Crabwalk"" by Gunter Grass, or works of nonfiction such as ""The Perfect Storm"" and ""In the Heart of the Sea"". But Stilgoe, whose other works have plumbed suburban culture, locomotives, and the shore, is ultimately after bigger fish. Through the humble, much-ignored lifeboat, its design and navigation and the stories of its ultimate purpose, he has found a peculiar lens on roughly the past two centuries of human history, particularly the war-tossed, technology-driven history of man and the sea.