Inside the Floating City (Paperback)
Language: English
Published by Sea Lantern, 2025
- Softcover
- New
Seller: CitiRetail, Stevenage, United KingdomCitiRetail
AbeBooks seller since June 29, 2022
Condition: New
£ 24.99
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Paperback. Inside the Floating City offers a rare, lived perspective on one of the world's most complex working environments: the modern cruise ship. Drawing on more than fifteen years at sea, having risen to senior officer, Vega Mare reveals how a closed, constantly moving world thinks, adapts, and sustains itself far from land.Blending narrative nonfiction with clear-eyed analysis, Mare explores how thousands of people create order, culture, and meaning in a place without stillness. Through firsthand accounts, readers witness the operational rhythms of ship life - how decisions are made, how teams function under pressure, and how a floating city maintains safety, continuity, and emotional balance while traveling the world.Alongside its literary and sociological depth, the book also serves as a practical, insider guide for those considering a career at sea. Mare outlines how the hiring process works, what new crew can expect before boarding, how contracts, pay, and scheduling operate, and how to navigate the challenges of health, endurance, hierarchy, and adaptation. Few resources offer such a detailed, experience-based blueprint of crew life - from the first day on board to the disorienting feeling of returning home.Inside the Floating City will appeal to readers of immersive nonfiction, maritime literature, sociology of work, and hospitality studies, as well as to aspiring crew members seeking an authentic understanding of ship life. Both accessible and deeply observed, it serves as a compelling narrative for general readers and a valuable resource for libraries, maritime academies, career counselors, and programs focused on organizational culture, leadership, and human behavior.Key Selling PointsA rare insider account of more than fifteen years at sea aboard major cruise ships, offering unparalleled access to a closed and constantly moving world.Blends narrative nonfiction with organizational insight, making it valuable for readers of memoir as well as students of leadership, hospitality, and sociology.Provides a complete blueprint for aspiring crew members, including hiring processes, contracts, pay systems, health challenges, safety culture, and life onboard from first day to coming home.Explores themes of endurance, identity, teamwork, and culture within one of the most diverse and disciplined workforces in the world.Ideal for libraries, maritime academies, travel programs, and workforce-development collections, bridging personal narrative with practical professional guidance. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. …
Seller Inventory # 9791399093100
- Title
- Inside the Floating City (Paperback)
- Author
- Vega Mare
- Publisher
- Sea Lantern
- Publication year
- 2025
- Condition
- new
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 13
- 9791399093100
A modern cruise ship is more than a vessel — it is a world with its own pulse, logic, and quiet rituals.
When Vega Mare first joined the crew, she stepped into a city at sea where timing shaped every interaction, and where seventy nationalities worked in a rhythm most guests never glimpse. Over fifteen years, she moved through the ship’s backstage corridors, crew decks, and senior officer ranks — learning not only the work, but the interior life that forms around it, and entering a constellation of experiences she had never imagined the world could hold until she stepped aboard.
Inside the Floating City offers a rare view into that world.
Not as spectacle, and not as confession, but as a lived map of how people endure, adapt, and find meaning within an environment built entirely on motion.
Rather than lifting a curtain, this book invites the reader inside:
into the tempo of a ship at dawn,
into the balance of leadership and restraint,
into the quiet negotiations that hold a floating city together.
For cruise enthusiasts, it reveals the human architecture behind the voyage — the unseen harmonies and pressures that shape each day at sea.
For aspiring or newly hired crew, it offers grounded orientation:
what life feels like on the inside,
how teams form and fracture,
what anchors you,
and what challenges you can expect as you find your place aboard.
Both readers — the dreamer and the doer — will find a world rendered in cinematic stillness and lived detail.
Clear, atmospheric, and deeply observant, Inside the Floating City is a portrait of seafaring life as it is experienced from within: measured, human, and shaped by the quiet discipline that keeps a ship steady in open water.
About the Author
Vega Mare is a writer and former senior ship officer with more than fifteen years at sea. Having led international teams across oceans, she now writes from the meeting point of system and soul — where structure reveals its humanity, and where story gives form to the unseen rhythms of modern seafaring.
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About the Author
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CitiRetail
Stevenage, United Kingdom
AbeBooks seller since June 29, 2022
Shipping rates from United Kingdom to U.S.A.
| Item | 7 to 14 business days | 7 to 60 business days |
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