Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
by Eric Jay Dolin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Eric Jay DolinEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-07-02
ISBN: 0393060578
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Book Reviews of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
Book Review: History comes alive
Summary: 5 Stars
It's cliched to say something like "The best history books bring history alive." The really, really best ones simply transport you back in time.
"Leviathan" does that, and with vivid first-hand accounts. It's one thing to think of whaling as some glorious adventure or conquest; it's quite the other to read a disgruntled sailor's cursing of his boss, who basically just decided to steal another year of his sailors' lives: "He ought to have the tooth ache for amusement and a bawling child to rock him to sleepe." Don't hold back -- tell us how you really feel!
Mixed in with the tales are larger-picture stuff, including the double-dealing of whalers during wartime as they struggled to keep the industry, err, afloat. Whaling was incredibly important to the New England communities that turned it into an industrial production; Dolin casts economic issues into the proper context even as he finds voices from the past to explain it.
I'd been recommending another book, "The Devil in the White City," for years -- until I read "Leviathan: A History of Whaling in America." This is the book I recommend to all now, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
Summary of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales."To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry—from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades. 32 pages of illustrations.
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- Business & Investing > Economics
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- Science > Nature & Ecology > Oceans & Seas > Marine Life
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- History: Americas: General
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