Product Description

The story of a man's obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey -- from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching. All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London's Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality -- they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious. In 'Leviathan', Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession. What impelled Melville to write 'Moby-Dick'? After his book in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again. This book is an investigation into what we know little about -- dark, shadowy creatures who swim below the depths, only to surface in a spray of spume. More than the story of the whale, it is also the story of our own obsessions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1251 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'This history of man's dealings with whales is respectful, even mystical.' Daily Mail 'A scintillating, scattershot, blunderbuss of a book. Throughout the book, Hoare's unbridled enthusiasm for his subject is infectious!this thoroughly engaging, rigorously researched and often revelatory book is a joy to read and one which Melville, surely, would have appreciated.' Independent on Sunday 'So compelling and all-encompassing that it cast a spell on me that endured for days after I had done turning its beautifully illustrated pages!This is the book he was born to write, a classic of its kind!What poetry there is here and what a balm for the soul.' Observer 'Enjoyable trawl through the history, literature and lore of whales!As well as being a showcase for descriptive prose of great beauty, "Leviathan" is full of fascinating facts.' Guardian 'An elegant writer with a sharp eye for quirky detail!A lyrical and timely reminder of what we have to lose if we don't change our greedy ways.' Mail on Sunday 'In Hoare's hands, whales are almost limitlessly strange and interesting.' Sunday Times 'Hoare's idiosyncratic mingling of autobiography, anthropology and archaeology has reached its zenith!an enthralling volume. Hoare has the skill and humility to make this work, to him, great art and the Leviathan are both inexplicable, unknowable forces from the deep, wherein lies their wonder.' Daily Telegraph 'Insights and images rise in plumes from almost every page.' Daily Telegraph (Book of the Week) 'With "Leviathan" -- a cultural, personal and natural history of whales and whaling, richly stocked with whale lore and written with admirable intensity and elan -- Hoare might be said to have literalised his interest in surface and depth!Shuttling between inhuman actuality and anthropomorphism, Hoare breaches the surface of his subject in the most profound fashion.' Brian Dillon, Irish Times 'Wonderful illustrated biography of this most magnificent beasts is studded with glittering shards of natural history and social science.' Metro London 'The author's passion for whales is infectious.' Esquire 'Hoare's personal pilgrimage, wandering, reflective, frequently very personal, owes much to WG Sebald, including the device of peppering the text with black and white pictures. Whales have a very intimate and troubled relationship to man, one which this elegiac book does much to illuminate.' Waterstones Books Quarterly 'Tells you everything you need to ever wanted to know about the kings of the ocean.' Wanderlust

Review
'Philip Hoare has long been acclaimed as a brilliantly unconventional writer...This is the book he was born to write'

Review
`As well as being a showcase for descriptive prose of great beauty, Leviathan is full of fascinating facts...'

Customer Reviews

My top book of the year so far
This book absolutely blew me away.

I'm a sucker for books that meander through different areas of human knowledge and Leviathan does this with almost effortless aplomb. Hoare delves into literature, history, science, anecdote, anthropology and art to explore our long and often difficult relationship with whales. Hoare manages to dive between poetic lyrical writing and the harshest of scientific facts with only an occasional misstep.

His writing just soars - I was alternatively speechless with wonder, livid with anger, enraptured with awe and on several occasions weeping with shame at how we've treated and continue to treat whales.

'Ah the world, oh the whale.'
Philip Hoare is one of those authors who, like Geoff Dyer, would provide a great subject for a sweepstake: What will their next book be about? Hoare is essentially a biographer, but even so his subjects have ranged from the brightest of the Bright Young Things, Stephen Tennant , to the military hospital on Spike Island , and the little known religious leader Mary Ann Girling in the New Forest of Victorian England. Now we have his all encompassing work on his life's obsession, the whale, a book already described as a future 'classic' by Jacob Weisberg, chairman of the judges for this years Samuel Johnson Prize which Hoare won in June. Combining history, natural history, biography and literary criticism, Hoare has written a book worthy of the planet's largest inhabitant and one which has the stature to stand alongside its equally gargantuan counterpart in literature: Moby-Dick.

Hoare begins with a personal view, surprising one with the view that whilst whales have been a fascination of his for much of his life he himself has always been afraid of deep water. Unable to swim as a child it wasn't until his mid twenties that he finally taught himself in a chilly East End pool. I too have a fear of deep water, so I sympathise. Fear is an important theme I think when confronting the whale, one which permeates our thoughts about it and our reaction to it. Melville's novel itself is one which many, including myself, have found daunting or difficult to read, and Hoare thankfully is one of us too.

'Like many people, I found the densely written chapters of Herman Melville's book difficult to read. I was defeated by its size and scale, by its ambition. It was as incomprehensible as the whale itself...After my first visit to New England, I looked at it again; just as I was ready to see whales, I was ready to read Moby-Dick.'

You do have to be ready but once you are it is an extraordinary book, it's characteristically compendious and erratic nature described by Hoare as 'like a nineteenth century search engine'. By examining the themes of that book along with the personal history of its author Hoare's own book acts as a kind of reader to run alongside the classic text, finding informed ways to illuminate its inception, development and impact. Throughout the book the scale is massive, the import huge, quotations from the bible resonate, the focus on Melville's friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne shines a light on even the dedication on the book's opening page.

That scale is due to the animal itself of course and firmly part of its fascination. Hoare takes the time to look at several species and in this generously illustrated book manages to cram in impressive amounts of natural history. It's filled with the kind of tidbits that you can't help but share with others: That impressive head filled with precious oil could for instance be the source of the whale's sonar ability allowing it not only to 'see' it's prey but almost to scan it, even detecting pregnancy for example, or there's the Christmas gift that JFK never received: a whale's tooth that Jackie had had engraved with the presidential seal, laid with his body in the coffin on the day before his funeral - 'the king of Camelot interred with a talisman of a heroic age'.

'Here was an animal close to me as a living creature - one that shared my heart and lungs, my mammalian qualities - but which at the same time was possessed of a supernatural physicality. Whales are visible markers of the ocean life we cannot see...yet they are entirely mutable, dreamlike because they exist in another world, because they look like we feel as we float in our dreams.'


That description of a whale could only have come from a man living in the modern age for through his examination of whaling and its history Hoare shows how perceptions of these giants have changed, the Sperm whale in particular has gone from being a fearful foe to a placid, gentle giant of the seas. 'The distance between these two notions is the distance between myth and reality, between legend and science, between human history and natural history.' There is still so much unknown about these creatures but our knowledge at its most advanced stage tells us that the potential lifespans for these giants could well be into double centuries and beyond, the important word there being potential given the reality of continued whaling under the guise of research, in spite of the threat of extinction. But there is no soapboxing or activism, just the relaying of facts imbued with a clear love and admiration for animals which we have only just begun to understand.

That word fascination keeps popping up again and again in my mind. Whether it's the evocative description of the approach to that 'cathedral of science', the Natural History Museum, a building which manages to thrill just as much as an adult as it ever did when a child, or the magical closing chapter when Hoare returns to a more personal perspective, conquering that childhood fear to share the water with those giants we have come to know so much more about, an emotional climax to a thrilling journey. I couldn't begin to do justice to such a definitive book in a short review but only hope that for anyone tempted to make that journey I may have pushed you a little closer to the water. The writing is skilfull, the knowledge impressive, but underneath all of that what makes it live is the heart beating within.

A whaley good book - sorry!
This is a heartfelt and poignant book that details the authors deep respect for these giants of the sea. Part scientific description, part history of whaling, part travelogue and with several diversions to Moby Dick, this book shatters myths yet manages to divulge loads of new facts and interesting stories. Beautifully illustrated, this an extremely well laid out book, and for a hardback, remarkably light, which I think is important as it can be read on the train.

Well worth a look for any nature lover, anyone with even a passing interest in the sea, and anyone who just wants to read a darn fine history and travel book, this must encourage you to read and help you understand Moby Dick a book I have never read but certainly intend to do so now.