"As lovingly and painstakingly constructed as the navigators' one irreplaceable talisman, David Barrie's exquisite book is a hymn to a now-vanishing feature of maritime life, a finely-chased reminder of just how much we all owe to that one small piece of apparatus" -- SIMON WINCHESTER, author of the New York Times bestselling The Men Who United the States and The Professor and the Madman "Beneath the book's calm surface churns a melancholic message about how the comfort of technology -- symbolized by the sextant's almighty antagonist, GPS -- has turned our gaze away from the stars." -- Entertainment Weekly "Even for armchair adventurers with no sea legs to speak of, Barrie's Sextant is a compelling read." -- Shelf Awareness.