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 | | Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin ISBN-10: 9780393331578 ISBN-10: 0-393-33157-1 ISBN-13: 9780393331578 ISBN-13: 978-0-393-33157-8 Paperback 2008-07-07 W. W. Norton Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description "The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation."—Nathaniel Philbrick. Leviathan is 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. | ||
Reviews | ||
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. | ||
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. | ||
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. | ||
The Flurry of American Whaling, "Fin Out." I don't generally read histories. I usually read novels. Although I love the subject matter of history, i.e. humanity, I find most historical narratives as dry as the leftover hardtack from a long sea voyage. In light of that it is essential to point out that Eric Jay Dolin's, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, is much more than just an historical narrative. As an obsessive enthusiast of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick I have read that novel at least eight times. Every time I have the privilege of reading, and teaching, the greatest American novel ever written, I find myself in need of further research to embellish both my and my students' literary and historical experience of whaling. Dolin's history fills that sea bill of lading admirably. Not only is it a comprehensive history of the American Whaling Industry, as the title indicates, but it reads like one of the better novels I have ever relished. His creative success lies in the fact that he uses historicity, the citation of primary sources, in a way that allows the reader to envision the players and hear their voices. As a student of Melville's prose I have always wondered about the Arthurian fascination I feel whenever I read the arresting Romance of The Quest for the White Whale. Reading Dolin's history helped me better understand the facts behind my Romantic fascination as well as vividly conveying the stories that delineate one of American history's most successful, significant and lucrative industries. A perfect example of this can be found in Chapter Five, "The Whale's Whale," when the author clearly explains the practical importance of hunting the Sperm Whale and how it got its name. The ultimate success of Dolin's history can be distilled into one word, storytelling. Dolin is a magnificent and articulate storyteller. The exhaustive research that went into the composition of this history includes some of the most compelling and adventurous tales this reader has ever experienced. From the Colonial tales of "Crook Jaw," through the American Revolution, and right into the exploits of Commodore David Porter during the War of 1812, Dolin captures the full excitement and adventure of whaling and the country that "once upon a time" excelled the rest of the world in its economic and military supremacy. A nation that once achieved that prowess through innovation and creativity rather than sheer wealth and brute force. Moving from there he vividly portrays the ascent and decline of whaling through "The Golden Age" to "The Disaster and Decay," of the industry not long after the mayhem of the Civil War. In short, the success of this book is no fluke. It has won numerous awards because of the author's well-yarned tales. This reader is also struck by the abundantly hopeful undertones of this work. The fact that America survived its dependency on whale oil, an industry as vital to American sustenance then as crude oil is today, through the discovery of alternative fuel sources, is a living testament to Yankee ingenuity. That ingenuity has historically dictated our success as a nation. What is particularly pertinent about Dolin's history is the lesson it contains; as a nation we have weaned ourselves off detrimental energy dependencies before, with some determination, we can do it again! The W.W. Norton Company also deserves rich praise. Through the publication of this brilliant history they have maintained their sterling, and well-deserved, reputation for publishing the finest, and most authoritative, critical works available. Like their Critical Edition of Moby-Dick they have once again proven themselves to be the zenith of scholarly research and expert storytelling. As such, Eric Jay Dolin and W.W. Norton richly compliment one another; they both have a good eye for a great tale. | ||
The Best Whaling History Out There If you're going to read one book on the history of American whaling, this is the one. For those new to whaling history, Leviathan is both a solid introduction and very readable history of one of America's most important industries, sprinkled throughout with the kind of stories - from the discovery of the Gulf Stream to surviving a fall into a sperm whale's jaws - that continue to make whaling a compelling topic. For enthusiasts who think they've read everything on the subject, Leviathan draws together the new research of the last 20 years and offers choice new anecdotes, like that of "Shorty," the tobacco-chewing female whaleman, or the humorous exchange between a whale ship and a World War I U-boat. For the scholar, Leviathan is an extensively footnoted single-volume reference for the history of American whaling, one that still manages to surprise with new source material not seen before, such as the 1742 diary of Benjamin Bangs, the earliest first-hand account of off-shore whaling from America. In short, Leviathan is the best whaling history published since the early 20th century, an essential reference that will remain so for many years. | ||