Product Description
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.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 44 reviews)

Leviathan

It is a fantastic and complete book about American whaling. After reading this you know everything about the subject.
Bram Oosterwijk
The Netherlands
October 05, 2008

A Great Read

I picked up "Leviathan" on a whim during a visit to the North Carolina shore. I'm glad I did -- I could hardly believe how good it turned out to be. The detail, the sweep of the narrative and Dolin's wonderful writing all make this a very special book. I felt I understood my nation's history far better after reading it.

August 23, 2008

A Whale of A Tale

What a superbly weaved tale in a very readable book which held my interests throughout. A great summer read on the beach or one whilst enjoying the quiet of an evening in the hamptons, the vinyard or nantucket itself all prominently featured. The whaling industry was truely the forbear of today's oil industry . . . good, bad or indifferent to the subject matter, you will likely learn a great deal and this one is hard to put down.
August 03, 2008

History comes alive

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.
June 28, 2008

Sweeping

This three hundred year saga of American whaling details one of the most significant industries of the New England coast. Along the way it captures the social and economic history of the nation through the triumphs and travails of this fascinating calling.

Starting with Captain John Smith's failed whaling expedition to the New World in 1614, Eric Dolan traces the rise of this endeavor from its rapid expansion in the colonial era up and down the Eastern seaboard, to its golden era in the mid 1850's when the sails of New England's whale ships whitened every sea. Americans were preeminent at this vocation and American whale oil lit the homes and cities of the world, greased the gears of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the course of feminine fashion. It produced amazingly brilliant candles and gave perfumes great staying power.

Leviathan is studded with fascinating vignettes while it traces the rise and fall of various whaling towns and industrialists. It is a most remarkable account of a fascinating, once vital, and by gone era in American history.

May 04, 2008

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy)
by Rick Atkinson

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
by David Halberstam

Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign
by Stephan Talty

Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
by Joan Druett

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
by Drew Gilpin Faust