content: Philbrick takes the reader on a journey like no other, and explains each wave along the way. I couldn't put it down. I had a special interest in that my great-great-grandfather was a whaling captain ("Master"), and traveled those waters with my great-grandfather as a toddler on board. My one criticism of the author's perspective is what he didn't critique - cannibalism! I know it is easy to point fingers when I was not there, starving and dying of thirst, but the author went too far in the other direction and became their justifiers, based on the accounts of two survivors who chose to eat their friends. Why was there not a serious discussion about chosing to die with dignity rather than deify life at the cost of eating and drinking your friends? Perhaps the men who died earlier did hold to this. Why was that not a significant part of this work?Nevertheless, thank you Nate Philbrick for a book that should be made into a movie, with some of this balance.