Book cover of Men and Whales

Book description

Traces the complex history of humans and whales--from the aborigines to tenth-century Basques to eighteenth-century British and Dutch whalers to the Yankee sperm whale fishery and the whaling industry in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa

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Why read it?

1 author picked Men and Whales as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This oversized book traces the long history of man’s tempestuous relationship with whales, and rather than focusing solely on American whaling, it covers whaling around the world. In addition to sections on Basque whaling going back more than a millennium, other parts of the book survey whaling in Australia, Japan, South Africa, Canada, Germany, Iceland, Norway, and the Caribbean, among many other locales. The book also discusses the anti-whaling movement in the twentieth century that ultimately led to the International Whaling Commission’s (not quite universal) moratorium on whaling, adopted in 1986. There are more than 300 images that beautifully complement…

From Eric's list on The best books on whaling history.

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