In The Heart of The Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Heart of the Sea:  The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick received the National Book Award in 2000 and was subsequently made into an unsuccessful moving by Ron Howard.  I listened to the unabridged audio version which tells the true story behind Moby Dick.

Started: 12/9/2016
Completed: 1/9/2017
Recommendation: Recommended, but you need a strong stomach
Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

consanguinity -- kinship; close relationship or close connection

Review:

The book starts at the end with the survivors being found by another whaleship.  That is as good a place as any.  There is a fair amount of time spent talking in graphic detail about the process of killing and recovering the oil from a whale.  It is nauseating.  This is a recurring theme, however, throughout the book and seems to pop up again just when you might have thought you'd been through it enough.  One would think it would pale in comparison to the cannibalism, but it does not.

This is a well written book that is difficult to assimilate.  The story is gripping and the characters are relatively interesting.  There are tons of interesting facts about whaling I never considered (like a boat only had around 20 people on it) and the implications of the hunting on the family (whale hunting took about 3 years per voyage).  The chronicling of bad judgement and bad mistakes (as well as bad luck) is enough to make you think that the survivors must have used up their bad luck in this one event.  Of course, they didn't and the whole story is more interesting for it.