First came Jaws by Peter Benchley, a novel about a stressed-out great white shark suffering from portion control issues. It sank its teeth into the New York Times Best-Seller List and hung on for an astonishing forty-five weeks. In the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg’s big-screen adaptation became an Exorcist-sized blockbuster, ensuring that a generation of children would be so terrified of sharks, they’d fish them into near extinction over the next three decades.
