The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a moving and sad survey of the great cetaceans and their fraught relationship with man. The subtitle "In Search of the Giants of the Sea" makes sense in the denouement of the author's concluding encounter with rare and beautiful examples at a remote location, but just as aptly it could be subtitled "Annotating [b:Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|153747|Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|Herman Melville|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320]" as the author so often quotes and amplifies details from the work and life of [a:Herman Melville|1624|Herman Melville|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1361337904p2/1624.jpg]. The cruelties exacted on these species by humans are among the shocking material here, but expectedly so. Not so expected, by me, was the rectal origins of the sought after perfume base ambergris. This is just one surprise about the whale that Hoare, obviously educated on and awed by his subject, imparts on this most readable work on these animals and their history.
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