by Philip Hoare. First published in Britain in 2008 as Leviathan and the winner of the prestigious BBC Samuel Johnson Prize, this gracefully written exploration of why whales fascinate us combines science, literature, history, and personal reflections. The author is a British writer of biographies of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde and an enthusiastic traveler to such whale-related locales as Nantucket, MA, and Mystic, CT. His discussions of whale biology, physiology, and migration are interspersed with quotes from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, excerpts from well-written accounts of 19th-century whaling voyages, and stories of present-day whale-watching trips, adding rich background. The illustrations, detailed index, and brief glossary add reference value. VERDICT Alexandra Morton's Listening to Whales and Trevor Norton's Underwater To Get Out of the Rain are other examples of books that center on the authors' personal relationships to the marine world. Fans of those titles as well as of Richard Ellis's Men and Whales will enjoy. Sure also to appeal to whale enthusiasts without a formal science background. --Library Journal.
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