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Title: a historian who can write...
Review: In November 1820 the Nantucket whaleship Essex was attacked by an angry spermwhale, 1,500 miles off the coast of Peru. This is the true story that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. After the Essex sank, the 20 crew members took to the open seas of the central Pacific in three whale boats. In the Heart of the Sea is a historian's account of the Nantucket whaling industry, the personalities of individuals, the destruction of the Essex and the three-month open-boat journey plagued by thirst, hunger, cannibalism, and bad management decisions. The book reads as smoothly as any novel yet is backed up by the authority of years of research by a historian specializing in Nanctucket Island (off the Cape Cod peninsula in Massachusetts).
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