The Last Whalers


Book Description

At a time when global change has eradicated thousands of unique cultures, The Last Whalers tells the inside story of the Lamalerans, an ancient tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who live on a remote Indonesian volcanic island. They have survived for centuries by taking whales with bamboo harpoons, but now are being pushed toward collapse by the encroachment of the modern world. Journalist Doug Bock Clark, who lived with the Lamalerans across three years, weaves together their stories. Clark details how the fragile dreams of one of the world's dwindling indigenous peoples are colliding with the upheavals of our rapidly transforming world, and delivers a group of unforgettable families.




The Last Whaler


Book Description

Capt. Nicholas Karas is both an ichthyologist and journalist. Throughout his life he has been intimate with the marine scene. He was born in Binghamton, N.Y. After four years in the Navys amphibious forces during the Korean Conflict he attended St. Lawrence and Johns Hopkins universities, where he majored in the biological sciences, and Syracuse University, where he received his masters degree in journalism. He joined the staff of True magazine, then Argosy magazine as outdoors editor. For nearly a decade after being associated with magazines, he became a fulltime freelance writer, traveling throughout the world and produced more than 500 major magazine features. Settling down, for 25 years, Karas became the staff outdoors columnist for Newsday (New York) and wrote more than 3,500 columns, then followed by 10 years as a freelance columnist for the N.Y. Times and several major magazines. Hunky is his first novel. Befriended years ago by James Michener, Karas asked him what to write about. He answered, write about what you know best. Hunky was the result. Hunky, is the story of two families who lived on opposite sides of the continental divide high in the Carpathian Mountains in 19th century eastcentral Europe. It spans three generations and a hundred years in their plight to escape more than a thousand years of oppression and servitude. Kurkis Reviewdescribed Karas uses of a unique journalistic genre, an adroit blend of history, biography, autobiography and fiction, that traces their Americanization in the coals mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania and the shoe factories of New York. The Last Whaler reveals Karas intense relationship with the sea. He has held his captains license for 30 years and regularly fished the off shore waters of Long Island. Few other waters have missed the cut of his keel. Karas and his wife Shirley live at the edge of land at Orient Point, N.Y.




Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America


Book Description

A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007 Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History "The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation." —Nathaniel Philbrick The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry—from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.




The Last Voyage of the Whaling Bark Progress


Book Description

The whaling bark Progress was a New Bedford ship transformed into a whaling museum for Chicago's 1893 world's fair. Traversing waterways across North America, the whaleship enthralled crowds from Montreal to Racine. Her ultimate fate, however, was to be a failed sideshow of marine curiosities and a metaphor for a dying industry out of step with Gilded Age America. This book uses the story of the Progress to detail the rise, fall, and eventual demise of the whaling industry in America. The legacy of this whaling bark can be found throughout New England and Chicago, and invites questions about what it means to transform a dying industry into a museum piece.




Last Whale


Book Description

At the end of the 1970s, one young reporter bears witness to the final days of Australia’s whaling industry. Thirty years after the last whale was captured and slaughtered in Australia, this incisive account tells the very human story of the characters and events that brought whaling to an end. This fair and balanced account portrays the raw adventure of going to sea, the perils of being a whaler, and the commitment that leads activists to throw themselves into the path of an explosive harpoon. Accompanied by a wonderful photographic record of the time, this is the action-packed history of a town reliant on whaling dollars pitted against a determined band of protesters.




We Are All Whalers


Book Description

"Marine scientist Michael J. Moore says we are all whalers, but we don't have to be. Eating fish leads to North Atlantic right whales' entanglement and death. Buying goods made around the world requires global shipping routes, which do not accurately consider right whale breeding and feeding sites, leading to collision. To explain this, Moore conveys to readers scenes from over thirty years' worth of fieldwork, performing whale necropsies for animals stranded on beaches, working as an independent researcher alongside whalers using explosive harpoons, and tracking injured pregnant whales to deliver antibiotics. Despite these sometimes disturbing experiences, Moore has written a hopeful book. He uses these stories to show we can change and to tell us how; the technology for rope-less fishing and tracking whale migrations already exist to protect both right whales and the people who depend on shipping and fishing for their livelihoods"--




The Real Story of the Whaler


Book Description




The Last of the Sail Whalers


Book Description

Annotated autobiographical articles by New Zealand and Tasmanian sealer, whaler and merchant mariner William McKillop (1865-1938)active 1880s-1930s. He was the principal source of information and inspiration for Will Lawson's books HARPOONS AHOY! (1937) and BILL THE WHALERR (1944).




A Whale Hunt


Book Description

With the gray whale off the endangered list, the Makah Indians decide to resurrect the skills of their ancestors and return to the hunt amidst tribal infighting and animal rights activists.




Whale Ships and Whaling


Book Description

Presents the story of the Austrian child-bride who, in the "safety" of a royal marriage, was swept up in the political furies of her time and paid with her life for the luxurious excesses associated with her court.




Recent Books