As the idle rich thronged the palatial hotels of the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1916, America was at its most self-confident. But the world's first industrial superpower was about to receive a series of terrifying shocks. Sharks, it was believed, were simply not man-eaters, so when a lone Great White shark, driven inshore by freak climatic conditions, began to develop a taste for human flesh, America went into total denial. Only after the most horrific attacks was the truth admitted - and an unprecedented national frenzy forced President Woodrow Wilson to mobilize the US Navy in an attempt to put nature back in its place. Combining biology, history and adventure, this is the first book on the events that pitted 20th-century technology against an ancient, mythic enemy and became the model for Peter Benchley's Jaws.