| View Larger Image | Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America | Paperbackby Eric Jay Dolin (Author)
| List Price: | $15.95 | | Price: | $10.85 | | You Save: | $5.10 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | W. W. Norton & Company | | Edition: | Reprintth Edition | | Page Count: | 512 Pages | | Publication Date: | July 17, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 125,279th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780393331578
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
“The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation.”—Nathaniel Philbrick This “engrossing account ... at once grand and quirky, entertaining and informative” (Publishers Weekly) delivers the fascinating 300-year history of American whaling, integrating literary, social, and economic history into an epic account of this once-vital industry. . |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 49 reviews)
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There once was a whaler from Nantucket by Joe M. Donahoe (salisbury maryland)  5 Stars
October 19, 2009
Before reading this book I never realized the impact that the whaling industry had on the development of this country in terms of the role the whaling products - mainly oil and baleen - had in the early U.S. economy. Anyone interested in U.S. history would love this book. Yes, the focus of the book is whaling but the author does a great job of showing the role / impact of whaling in U.S. culture and economy but was most interesting was the impact that the Revolutionary War, then War of 1812, and the Civil War had on whaling. The author does a great job of letting the readers know about who the ship captains were, and the crew and why anybody in their right mind would sign-up for a whaling trip. The author describes the condition of the crews on the ships (this ain't a Carnival Cruise)and their voyages looking for whales until the whales were over exploited and oil was discovered in Titusville, PA. It is a big book page-wise but it is still a "quick read" because the author does not get bogged down in unecessary details. When you finish the book you realize the role whaling had in the early history of this country. The author focuses on the "golden age" of whaling. The book does not address modern whaling or whaling issues but those are not nearly as interesting as the periold that the author covers. There are some B&W drawings, maps, illustrations included including copies of old ads for whaling products. I would emphasize that this book is a MUST for anybody interested in early US history, not just history of whaling. Working on a whaling ship.....probably worst job ever !!
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Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by J. Keller (Fleetwood, PA USA) 5 Stars
September 29, 2009
This is a fascinating history of whaling in America; it puts aside the concerns about killing these magnificent animals, and is a compelling historical account of how whaling impacted the country.
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Good, but meandering history by D. J. Nardi (Washington, DC)  3 Stars
January 21, 2009
The promos for this book suggested that it focused on how whaling affected U.S. history, particularly major events like the Revolutionary War. It does this, although this is only a minor portion of the book. The majority of the book is on the broader history of whaling, which is still interesting. However, every once in a while, I thought it meandered into anecdotes about particular whaling ships rather than the broader focus of whaling's role in U.S. history. Overall, it is a great compact work on U.S. whaling, but less useful as a contribution to general U.S. history.
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Leviathin by Kenneth J. Driscoll (Lakewood Ranch, FL, USA) 5 Stars
November 29, 2008
Was referenced to this book by a friend and I'm glad that I chose Amazon.
The book WAS IN EXCELLENT condition and shipped quickly. Thank you.
Ken
Driscoll
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300 Years, 1 fascinating volume. by J. Cox (USA) 5 Stars
November 13, 2008
Dolin did an absolutely amazing job in covering the 300 years of whaling history in one volume. It is very comprehensive, fascinating, and it is never boring. There are oddities and facts a reader would never think about coming across in a historic narrative. His book has been read, cited, awarded and peer reviewed by many scholars, maritime historians, and has many reviews by different publishers and historical journals. Dolin used many ideas in what he wrote from Herman Melville, author of The White Whale or as most people know it as Moby Dick. He also cited a fraction of his sources in his select bibliography from his extensive research. It spans from Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale published in 1839 and reprinted in 1973 to Fredrick W. True's The Whalebone Whales of the Western North Atlantic published in 1983. He also used many illustrations from the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the U.S Naval Historical Center. Dolin does not comment on whether whaling should be continued, he has simply written a book about the way whaling influenced the course of American history
I really enjoyed reading Leviathan. The thought of whaling seemed interesting to me and I am very happy to have had the opportunity to read and understand some of the seemingly personal history. Whaling was a huge part of history in ways that I certainly never thought of and I hope that if and when someone else reads this book that they learn as much as I did, if not more, from it. This book was simply fascinating to me as it was very clear and easy to understand. I utterly enjoyed the fact that Dolin did excerpts from some of the ship captain's journals and some of the colonist's diaries, it made the history seem more real and personal to me. There were so many products that I n ever thought that were made from a whale as well as how much whaling affected the daily lives of people. I had no idea that people were so involved and reliant on whaling and its importance to everyday lives. I also enjoyed the photographs and paintings; they gave a depth to the book more than words possibly could. Whaling did so much to decorate the fabric of America; it left such a solid imprint on the history of the United States. Whaling will never be forgotten as the "iron men in wooden boats" will forever live on in paintings, photographs, records and pages of history in America.
~I am a student who picked this book up for a school project, I really did enjoy reading this book and learning from it. I hope that all who read it will find it just as fascinating as I did~
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| In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
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The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival....
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