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| View Larger Image | Sea of Slaughter: Farley Mowat Library | Paperbackby Farley Mowat (Author)
| List Price: | $16.95 | |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Stackpole Books | | Page Count: | 420 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 01, 2004 | | Sales Rank: | 503,176rd |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The northeastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, from Cape Cod to Labrador, was the first region in North America to suffer from human exploitation. In this timeless narrative, Farley Mowat describes in harrowing detail the devastation inflicted upon the birds, whales, fish, and mammals of this icy coast--from polar bears and otters to cod, seals, and ducks. Since its first publication some 20 years ago, this powerful work has served as both a warning to humanity and an inspiration for change. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 3 reviews)
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A shaking litany of slaughter by humans by M. Roman  4 Stars
September 30, 2005
This book should be read by everyone who cares about animals. It is a sad litany of what humans can do in search of greed. Mowatt has assembled facts and figures that bring to life the slaughter of species that is still going on. One wonders what could have been done and what still can be done to stop more animal slaughter.
SOS is at once depressing and then an awakening to us all.
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Slaughter for Profit by Mark (Oregon)  5 Stars
August 06, 2005
Passionate, well-written account of what has become of animal life in North America since the arrival of the Europeans in the early 1500's. Amazing. I will never look at the world in the same way. Farley Mowat, focusing on the North-east of North America, paints a vivid picture of what animal life was like from 1500 to the present, frequently quoting those who saw it in its near natural state hundreds of years ago -- the great awk, the white bear, the buffalo, the whales, the dolphins, the seals. The European intruders saw this great abundance of life as an opportunity for profit, saw the millions of whales as so many tons of train oil. From one chapter to the next, the animal "nations" were slaughtered with no thought of the future, until there was no more profit to be made. "Sea of Slaughter", as sad and painful as it is, is a must-read book. A sampling of Farley Mowat's words (I am sure he won't mind):
"So ends the story of how the Sea of Whales became a Sea of Slaughter as, one by one, from the greatest to the least, each in turn according to its monetary worth, the several cetacean nations perished in a roaring holocaust fuelled by human avarice.
Now that there are no longer enough of them remaining to be of any significant commercial value, the fires that consumed their kinds are burning down. But it is unlikely -- our instincts being what they are -- that even the far flung scattering of survivors will ever be secure from our rapacity unless, and until, they receive worldwide protection.
Surely this is the least we can do to make atonement for the evil we have done to them. And it WAS evil -- of that, make no mistake."
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Will change your worldview forever 5 Stars
November 12, 2003
This book goes about the most heart-wrenching task - noting all the animals we've killed in North America - with none of the usual environmentalist emotional sentimentality. Mowat logically and systematically provides evidence of our wholesale slaughter by categories (land, sea, air) and species. Incredibly well written , and some of the first person historical accounts he unearths are shocking and shameful. This book will move you, anger you, and stay with you. Look in the sky - how many birds do you see? This book provides the sad answer why.
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Perhaps you�re not the slaughtering kind� by Owen Hughes (Montreal, Canada) 5 Stars
April 07, 2000
Since reading Mowat's "Sea of Slaughter," I can't get a certain picture out of my mind. It is of a sandy ocean beach, miles and miles long, where tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of morse came to socialize every summer until the middle of last century. The morse, or northern walrus, was a stupendous animal, of impressive bearing: a veritable lion of the sea. Yet it comes no more to those grounds, once the largest colony of its kind, out on Canada's Magdalene Islands, off the coast of Québec. To think that the morse were just a side-show to it all. To think that eventually, with the same energy and relentless mechanical force, we would come to decimate the northern fishery more or less entirely, leaving thousands of perplexed fisher folk stranded in coastal villages, wondering perhaps, just where that many fish could possibly have gone.On land, as in the water, nature's bounty was scarcely less prolific, the European's first reaction, scarcely less horrendous. Could this be the true, unknown history of North America, lying behind and directly concerning those early pilots and navigators like Cabot and Columbus. 400 or more years of unbelievably short-sighted culling of mighty herds, whether they were whales or bison or a hundred other species of birds and mammals known to have been hunted to the last. This is Mowat's sad chronicle. This is his portrait of what one day perhaps, will generally be known and accepted as history. And the only thing that may stop us is that we find we really don't want to ever learn this sort of truth. Besides being a remarkable contribution to the literature of ecology and environment, this is also one of Mowat's finest personal efforts. You can see by the very nature of the material that it took a being of remarkable strength just to tackle a project like this, let alone bring it to a conclusion. It's probably true that one can prepare all one's life for just one event. In Mowat's case, without negating any other part of his remarkable œuvre, this may just be it.
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shocking and utterly mind-blowing 5 Stars
July 27, 1999
Mowat wanted to write about life, humanity, and extinction. Obviously the topic was too broad, so he narrowed himself down to just discussing the North Atlantic and parts of the New World. I finished this book and was stunned by how much life there USED to be around here. Polar bears in Massachusetts? 12-foot sturgeon in the Chesapeake? Birds flocking in the millions that I had never even heard of? WE NEED MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS AND WE ALL NEED TO READ THEM!
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| A Whale For The Killing
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| The Boat Who Wouldn't Float
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| Walking on the Land
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No one writes about the Arctic and its inhabitants better than Farley Mowat. In Walking on the Land, he returns to this subject and, in the tradition of The People of the Deer, brings to life the plight of the Ihalmuit, or Barrenground Inuit, a people almost wiped out by famine and epidemics. Enlivened by vivid descriptions and larger-than-life characters, this book brings Mowat’s writing full circle, and will stand as a testament to his lifelong passion for the Arctic and his unparalleled...
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