The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.43 (827 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0061976202 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 480 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-08-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Deceptive title, more about Whaling than Whales Like most people, I have loved whales since I was a kid (though I have always been more fascinated by sharks). This book's title, however, was a bit misleading there were a lot of fascinating facts about whales, but it was honestly more about whaling than the whales themselves. Which made it a pretty depressing (albeit very interesting) read, all in all. And throughout, the book constantly references Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), and the life of Herman Melville. So, if you are very familiar with that piece of classic literature, I think you will enjoy this more than someone who only has limited knowledge of the. "A literary celebration of everything whale" according to Lynn Harnett. This wide-ranging paean to the world's largest mammals had its origins in fear. As a boy, British biographer Hoare was terrified of water; his imagination reeling at the depths his eyes could not fathom.Nevertheless, in his mid-20s he determined to learn to swim. "In the chilly East End pool, built between the wars, I discovered that the water could bear up my body. I realized what I had been missing; the buoyancy of myself."He still wasn't ready to obsess about the whale for our benefit; he still found his attention wandering from the density of Herman Melville's Moby Dick despite repeated attempts. It wasn't until his first visit to New E. S. Walsh said should have been called "whaling". After hearing the author on the radio, I was thrilled to find my local library had the book available. Now I'm very glad I didn't buy it, because I found the actaul book quite disappointing. There are interesting passages -- the story of the author's own pursuit of an encounter with whales is vivid and moving, and I enjoyed his examination of Melville's life and work (apparently repurposed from a program he created for the BBC). But the bulk of the book, as another reviewer has mentioned, is about whaling, not whales. Not only are there far too many details (many of them repeated several times) about the development of whaling in various oc
“Unpredictable and amusing and informative and original, cavorting between biology, history, travel writing, and memoir.”—Mark Kurlansky The Whale by Philip Hoare is a enthralling and eye-opening literary leviathan swimming in similar bestselling waters as Cod and The Secret Life of Lobsters. Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, The Whale is a lively travelogue through the history, literature, and lore of the king of the sea—the remarkable mammals that we human beings have long been fascinated with, from Moby Dick to Free Willy. Bestselling author and naturalist Bernd Heinrich calls it, “a moving and extraordinary book,” and Hoare’s sparkling account of swimming with these incredible behemoths will delight whale
The result is a deeply moving and thought-provoking biography of the planet’s toughest, yet most vulnerable of prehistoric survivors. Hoare's admitted mania for whales led him to write Leviathan, or the Whale—which was awarded the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize, Britain’s most prestigious award for nonfiction. The book has finally migrated to this side of the Atlantic under a new title, The Whale. Hoare is not a scientist, but rather a biographer whose subjects have tended toward highbrow figures like Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde. The Whale takes us well beyond the limits of what we can see, hear or otherwise objectively "know" about whales, and offers a much more vivid sense of their true magnitude. --Lauren Nemroff. In approaching cetaceans, the author&rsquo