In the Heart of the Sea

Engrossing story about the real ship Essex on which Moby Dick was based. Incredibly researched and well-written.

Excellently told, amazing how the author was able to get together so many accounts and weave them into the best understanding of this event were likely to have. Secondarily, I think maybe we should stop thinking of Nantucket and America's whaling history as a heartwarming story of human triumph, and more like a dark stain on human history. These men should not be respected or hailed as heroes for the work they were doing when tragedy struck them.

Excellent non-fiction about the plight of a doomed whaleship. I had no idea when I started this that the accounts of survivors were in part the inspiration for Moby Dick. Recommended if you're interested in nautical stories, survival stories, or New England history. OR WHALES. VENGEFUL WHALES.

I don't know why I set this one down for so long. An excellent account of flawed men, doing the unthinkable, in the pursuit of money, at the expense of the environment around them. But, of course, they (mostly) didn't regard that.

A gripping portrait of the tragedy that inspired Moby Dick. I love these tails of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, and as far as the middle of nowhere goes, it doesn't get more bleak than 97 days in a boat in the dead zone of the Pacific Ocean! It's an incredible story told incredibly well.

I only hold back on the 5 star rating because I didn't really connect with the characters. Choosing to steer away from islands because they were scared to be eaten by scary natives, only to end up eating each other. And then eating the black people first (though probably not because of prejudice, the author points out) It all lessened my sympathy for their plight, but not in a fun love-to-hate way. Their plight was horrible, but I wasn't really rooting for them. The author does a good job of painting their career as a way of life, and their ignorance and poor choices as a result of culture and inexperience, but it didn't sell me.
Overall though, it was really interesting and entertaining. I'd say fun except a lot of people died horrible deaths...

It's easy to see how reading Moby Dick led me to In the Heart of the Sea; the story of the sinking of the Essex helped inspire Melville to write his great classic. It's also easy to see why I loved this book; In the Heart of the Sea is the mesmerizing true tale of a ship in the early nineteenth century sunk by the wrath of a whale and the desperation of its crew of twenty to survive in three small whale boats for three months. Only eight men lived, and it's the story of their struggle that is, at once, both amazing and horrifying.

The story is pretty incredible, but I had a lot of trouble staying focused. It was a slow start and it felt a bit like work to finish. I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator was a little on the monotone side which didn't help matters. I might have enjoyed it more as a paper or ebook.

Very good.... basically stayed up all night to read. So compelling - the story of the whalers journey after the shipwreck was heartbreaking. Although it was hard to read ... I couldn't put it down.

Page-turning story, well contextualized without being ruined by meandering tangents. Definitely recommend.

By now, you may have seen the trailer for the movie In the Heart of the Sea. If not, and if movies are your thing, I recommend you do so. Go ahead. I'll wait right here. [In the Heart of the Sea Trailer]

Wow, right? Therein lies the problem with this book: one of comparison. In the Heart of the Sea is your traditional non-fiction book. It presents the facts. Even when those facts are spectacular, they are presented with the tone of your average history teacher. So that climatic moment of a whale smashing a ship, surf spraying, desperation on the faces of haggard sailors, becomes

...what most impressed the first mate was the remarkably astute way in which the bull employed its God-given battering ram. Both times the whale had approached the vessel from a direction “calculated to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the shock.” Yet, even though it had come at the Essex from ahead, the whale had avoided striking the ship directly head-on, where the ship's heavily reinforced stem, the vertical timber a the leading edge of the bow, might have delivered a mortal gash.

In the Heart of the Sea

The wreck of the whaleship Essex, stove in by a whale, is an established part of American lore and notably appropriated by Melville for Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea weaves together the narratives of the survivors to present their ordeal in a manner that is both clinical (with depictions of the processes of both whale rendering and human starvation) and unsparing in its presentations of the misjudgments of impetuous First Mate Owen Chase and the irresolute Captain Pollard. Beyond the tragedy of the Essex, this book captures in exacting detail life in the whaling community that was 19th century Natucket

An interesting historical novel about a monster sperm whale that sunk a Nantucket whaling ship - full of facts, but not dull or dry in the least.

Philbrick writes great history. I was so impressed by this book, I picked up Moby Dick.