However cruelly the rocks of Massachusetts's South Shore have treated storm- driven sailors, there can be no questioning the selflessness and courage of the keepers and surfmen who played host to the no man's land between frozen beach and gale-tossed sea. Read John Galluzzo's enthralling account of the Life-Saving Service and meet legends like Joshua James, whose surfboat, Nantasket, once saved twenty-nine men from six boats in a grueling thirty-six hours. Chart a course through the service s history, from its humble beginning in the refuge huts built after the American Revolution until its absorption into the U.S. Coast Guard in the twentieth century.