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| Editor's Book Pick |
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IN THE HEART OF THE SEA
This is the most amazing
non-fiction book I've read all year. Told with a historian's eye
for fact and an artist's eye for detail, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA
makes everything from the history of Quaker run Nantucket to the
nutritional details of cannibalism interesting and understandable. The whale ship Essex was the background that inspired Herman Melville, a whaler himself, to write his epic, MOBY DICK. The ship was sunk after an attack by a sperm whale thousands of miles off the coast of South America. Its crew was forced to endure an almost unbelievable 93 days on the open sea. How the whalers endured and what happened to the survivors is, in some ways, the story of bravery, courage and skill, but on another level it is a karmic tale of man and nature, with nature coming up a little ahead for a while. |
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Philbrick used two accounts
of the tragedy written by survivors. The first written by the first
mate, was published within six months of their rescue. The second,
written by the cabin boy, did not surface until recently when someone
was doing renovation on their house and found the unpublished manuscript.
The author does a good job of gleaning the facts from the two tales
and noting when one of the survivors may have been shedding a kind
light on circumstances. Also woven masterfully though the story
is a first rate history of Nantucket and the whaling industry, the
intricacies of whaling, sailing and precise detail about the physical
reactions to long term starvation, and the dynamics of leadership
roles in a survival situation. |
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