The subtitle of Nathaniel Philbrick's non-fictional account of the story that inspired Moby Dick is: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. And, certainly, the real story involves a lot of dead whalers. It seems that reality, unsurprisingly, didn't provide anything quite comparable to the hubris of Ahab and the monomaniacal obsession with his malevolent foe. The captain and crew of the Essex may have made a few dubious decisions, but they were mostly just victims of bad luck. So the book could be more accurately subtitled: the bizarre accident of the whaleship Essex. Despite the lack of ancient Greek levels of comeuppance, the story has plenty of drama, and Philbrick ably combines historical accuracy with an engrossing narrative. Maybe I'm odd, but I found the most interesting part was not the human interest story of 20 men trying to survive a mid-Pacific shipwreck in 1820, but rather all the color that sets the context. I particularly enjoyed learning about the paradoxes of the Nantucket Quakers at the heart of early 18th century whaling industry, as well as the history of the gradual exploration of the Pacific for purely commercial purposes. The book is a quick read, so I won't spoil it for you by giving away the ending. But let's just say that the whale wins.
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