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Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America | 
 enlarge | Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $8.00
You Save: $7.95 (50%)
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Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 50730
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0393331571
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780393331578
ASIN: 0393331571
Publication Date: July 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 Leviathin November 29, 2008
Kenneth J. Driscoll (Lakewood Ranch, FL, USA)
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
300 Years, 1 fascinating volume. November 13, 2008
J. Cox (USA)
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~
A Fascinating and Balanced Investigation of American Whaling November 2, 2008
A. Vander Meulen (Boston, MA USA)
Eric Jay Dolin's history of whaling in America is a great read. He goes to great pains to judge whaling on its own terms, chronicling the rise and decline of whaling from multiple points of view: looking at the impact of improving whale-hunting technologies; industries and towns that grew up to support the whaling industry; products of whaling and how extensively they influenced the regional (mostly New England) and national economy; how whaling was impacted, and what roles it played, in each major American War (up through World War I); its environmental impact and how the industry evolved over time to search farther afield for whales as populations declined closer to home; and how other industries, such as the rise of the Petroleum industry and declining demand for whalebone, eventually caused whaling's demise in America. He also has a very interesting segment on how our cultural memory came to embrace American Whaling as a nostalgic saga within American History. I found his discussions of the human element in whaling, such as the evolving nature of the economic and social relationships between whale ship owners, captains, and crewman to also be well done.
You really come to understand how whaling changed over time: starting as an ad-hoc and opportunistic effort by Indians and colonists, to the first whaling ships with crews (consisting mostly of colonists and Indians), to the gradual shift over the centuries to a highly exploitive relationship between ship owners/captains and crews (that had many traits in common with the old southern sharecropping economy and the modern exploitation of "illegal immigrant" labor).
Dolin's love for whales and training in environmental science are visible on every page. He succeeds in approaching the subject with non-judgmental eyes, but his skills help you appreciate how whalers saw the animals, and help you develop a respect-for and understanding of the animals themselves. He also does a great job of describing the various species of whales that were hunted by the whalers: why they were valued, and how the aspects of each species impacted the ways in which they were hunted.
Dolin focuses mostly on Nantucket and New Bedford, the two largest whaling communities throughout the rise and fall of the American whaling industry; though he examines the experiences of Mystic and other towns as well. Each whaling community had particular aspects that contributed to their rise and eventual decline such as location, accessibility to markets, exposure to foreign intrusion and domination during wartime, and specialization in terms of the species of whale they hunted. All of these aspects contributed to various communities rising and then falling in prominence and prosperity, allowing others to rise to the forefront as the industry evolved.
I have long been a student of American history, and found this book to be both accurate in terms of historical fact as well as sensitive to the evolving and constantly changing dynamics of what I'll term the "American Experience," culture, political landscape and economy.
The teaser quote on the cover from Nathaniel Philbrick: "The Best History of American Whaling in a Generation." was well chosen, as Philbrick's book (Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War - which I've also reviewed) is very similar in terms of style and intended audience, as well as also being a great read.
If you are a student of American History, and want to read a well- researched, well-written and thought provoking survey of the history of American Whaling, this is definitely the book for you. Five Stars!
 Leviathan October 5, 2008
A. J. Oosterwijk
It is a fantastic and complete book about American whaling. After reading this you know everything about the subject.
Bram Oosterwijk
The Netherlands
A Great Read August 23, 2008
Mauriac
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.
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