Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

Couverture
W. W. Norton & Company, 24 juin 2008 - 479 pages

A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007
A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007
Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007
Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History

"The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation." —Nathaniel Philbrick

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.
 

Table des matières

Introduction
11
John Smith Goes Whaling 1
17
The King of Waters The SeaShouldering Whale
30
All Along the Coast
41
4b Nantucket the Faraway Land
63
The Whales Whale
75
Into Ye Deep
90
Candle Wars 10 9
109
Ruin
149
Up from the Ashes 1 65
165
Knockdown
188
The Golden Age
205
DISASTER
307
From the Earth
335
Ice Crush
342
Fading Away
353

Glory Days 1 19
119
On the Eve of Revolution
139

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À propos de l'auteur (2008)

Eric Jay Dolin is the best-selling and award-winning author of numerous works in maritime history, including Leviathan, Rebels at Sea, and Black Flags, Blue Waters. A graduate of Brown, Yale, and MIT, he lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

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