In the Heart of the Sea

Praise for In the Heart of the Sea
    “ In the Heart of the Sea brings a wrenching tale of death and destruction magnificiently to life. In addition to being an incredibly gripping tale of survival, Philbrick’s book is an amazingly intimate and detailed look at life aboard a nineteenth-century whaling ship. Much as Melville did in Moby-Dick, the author takes the reader and makes him part of the crew.”
    —Atlanta Journal-Constitution
     
    “Reading of the disaster in Philbrick’s book, you don’t wonder why Melville was captivated by it: What happened to the Essex and its men is fodder for an adventure story as nerve-wracking as the illfated expeditions that make modern bestsellers like The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air. It is suspenseful, heartbreaking and sickening, rife with the kind of human folly and cultural hubris that allow readers to imagine how they would escape such a horrid fate, and make young novelists recklessly philosophical.”
    —L.A. Weekly
     
    “[A] fabulously well-told story . . . In the Heart of the Sea turns out to be much more than just a sea story, though it would stand tall on that basis alone. And what a story. In the Heart of the Sea would have been a page-turner if it had been fiction. As a real-life adventure, it’s compelling and chilling from start to finish.”
    —Wilmington News Journal
     
    “Compelling . . . Philbrick does an admirable job of bringing to life not only an engrossing story of endurance, but also of the whaling tradition itself. He records the crew’s increasingly dismal prospects for survival in a language worthy of Melville’s best foreboding prose.”
    —The Houston Chronicle
     
    “As both a historical companion to Moby-Dick and perhaps the most thrilling sea tale of all time, In the Heart of the Sea speaks to the same issues of class, race and our relationship to nature that permeate the classic works of Melville.”
    —Tampa Tribune & Times
     
    “If you loved Titanic and gobbled up The Perfect Storm then In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is just for you. It’s a seat-of-your-pants, real life tale. . . . These pages rock and roll as good as any contemporary action yarn . . . a grand tale of derring-do, of guts and gumption and of starvation and survival . . . While the tale is tragic, reading about it is a voyage that’s well worth taking.”
    —New York Post
     
    “Both historically thoughtful and highly entertaining . . . he weaves a fascinating discussion of Nantucket’s history into the Essex drama.”
    —Pittsburgh Gazette
     
    “A splendid yarn.”
    —The Orlando Sentinel
     
    “Mesmerizing . . . a story even sweeps week would find hard to top . . . [this] is one book you wouldn’t vote off a deserted island.”
    —Rocky Mountain News
     
    “This is heady stuff, a surefire formula for an engrossing book . . . much more than another disaster story tailored to the interests of prurient readers. Accompanied by helpful maps, ample notes, a bibliography and index, it’s a work of masterful scholarship that never intrudes on the high adventure quotient of the narrative.”
    —Raleigh News & Observer
     
    “A superbly written, tension-filled book . . . Whether as a brilliant follow-up to Moby-Dick or as an exciting and harrowing sea story all its own, this is an epic that deserves classic status.”
    —Parade
     
    “Nathaniel Philbrick’s admirable telling of the Essex story gains its power from his adherence to the simple brutal facts . . . all this Philbrick shows with a clarity and an economy that in no way slows his narrative, but lends it an awful, mounting inexorability . . . [told] with verve and authenticity, sure to become again what it has been from its earliest whisperings—a classic tale of the sea.”
    —San Francisco Chronicle

PENGUIN BOOKS
    IN THE HEART OF THE SEA
    Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War and Sea of Glory: The Epic South Seas Expedition, 1838-1842, winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize. Since 1986 he has lived on Nantucket Island.
     
     
     
     
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To Melissa

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