Reddit Reddit reviews In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

We found 33 Reddit comments about In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
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33 Reddit comments about In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex:

u/swift_icarus · 10 pointsr/movies

lol. the book is totally amazing if you want to learn more.

u/manyfandoms · 10 pointsr/movies

it's based on the real life shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick. Other posters point to the Nathaniel Philbrick non-fiction book [In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex] (http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828)

u/lenaro · 8 pointsr/wikipedia

Since you didn't specifically mention it: it was a whaleship that was attacked and sunk by a whale. For those who want to read more on this, I enjoyed this book.

u/Kalapuya · 7 pointsr/askscience

Yes - all other things being equal. This exact situation has played out countless times in real life with ships lost at sea, and sailors on barren islands. Just look at what happened to the whaleship Essex (the inspiration for Moby Dick, and very well documented in Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea) - the fattest sailors lived the longest/survived, while the skinniest ones died first. In the case of the Essex and many other ships of the 17th-19th centuries, the white sailors lived longer than the black sailors because they had more privileged lifestyles and thus weren't as skinny. This is also why, apart from other social and diet factors, Polynesian peoples are bigger on average - when their ancestors where colonizing the Pacific and on the sea for months at a time, the naturally larger individuals didn't die of starvation as often, and were thus selected for.

u/tigerraaaaandy · 4 pointsr/booksuggestions

Not all of these have cannibalism, but most:

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe, The Boat, In The Heart of The Sea (this is a really awesome book, as are the authors other works), Endurance, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, The Wreck of the Medusa, The Wreck of the Dumaru, Life of Pi

A couple non-fiction (with a legal focus) books about the Mignonette incident and the resulting famous case of Regina v Dudley and Stevens: Is Eating People Wrong?, and The Custom of the Sea

u/lockles · 4 pointsr/books

I'm surprised these haven't been mentioned yet:
In The Heart Of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick - The true story behind Moby Dick (and much easier to read).
Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons - Insane true story of a shipwreck, then it gets worse...

Also for fans of non-fiction novels try Longitude by Dava Sobel and Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson - both involve the sea. *edit for some obvious typo's

u/laserpilot · 3 pointsr/worldnews

In the heart of the sea is a great book on the true account of a group of sailors this happened to in the 1700's...adrift in the pacific for like 69 days i think...it was the influence for Moby Dick because a whale sunk their ship...never has a nonfiction book read like such an action novel for me

u/undercurrents · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

If you like non fiction (and lots of detail), In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick about the sinking of the whaleship the Essex and the crew surviving (or not) at sea.

u/seabirdsong · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is my all time favorite survival book. Read it before the movie comes out! It's absolutely crazytown.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828

u/ajmarks · 2 pointsr/Judaism

Jewish stuff aside, I'm currently in the middle of The Alchemy of Air about the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, about the Essex disaster, which inspired Moby Dick.

u/toomanydogs · 2 pointsr/books

Don't know if this helps at all, but for historical context the story of the whalingship Essex was purportedly part of the inspiration for Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book written from the perspective of a cabin boy on the Essex. It is one of the most riveting and haunting books I have ever read. This background stuff won't help too much on the literary criticism side of things, but helps put the story into a bit of historical context.

u/Vampire_Seraphin · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians
u/bhal123 · 2 pointsr/wikipedia

Until just last night I had never heard of the Essex. I was talking with a guy at my local bar and he recommended I read this book.

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

Read In the Heart of the Sea, it's the tale of the Essex. It's very good. http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship-Essex/dp/0141001828

u/eirtep · 2 pointsr/barstoolsports

non-fiction:

I liked Eddie' Huang's Fresh Off The Boat. Don't let the shitty TV show (which the dude doesn't like) scare you off. It's an interesting book that covers a wide range of shit. Not just cooking or being Asian.

If you know who Eddie Huang is and you aren't a fan/don't want to give it a shot, maybe alternatively try one of Anthony Bourdain's books. I personally haven't ready them though.

The Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whale ship Essex again, ignore the shitty movie. Well, I haven't seen it but I assume so. Very interesting true story about a whaling ship in 1800 something that's destroyed by a sperm whale and the shipwrecked crew tries to survive. Basically a real life Moby Dick - Herman Melville based his story on the Essex.
Fiction:

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is an easy entertaining easy read. I'm now realizing all of recommendations all seem to have movies but that's coincidence. I was also gonna say American Psycho.

Books are cool. I don't read enough anymore.

u/gabugala · 1 pointr/books

Ever read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex? Not exactly the same kind of adventure, but it fits the disaster bill quite nicely, and I really enjoyed it.

u/Budge-O-Matic · 1 pointr/rva

The real life story it's based on is a really good read.

http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828

Not sure about the movie that came out recently.

u/mizzlebizzle · 1 pointr/AskReddit

I was reading this book on the story of the whaling ship Essex and some of the survivors mention doing this as a rudamentary way of testing the ships speed. I'm curious if this is how it got named or if this is just what they did in a pinch.

u/gama_jr · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

In the heart of the sea, the disturbing true story behind Melville's Moby Dick.

u/nikdahl · 1 pointr/cigars

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

It's the nonfiction story about the Essex, and is a pretty amazing retelling of these men. The things they went through, and how they were forced to overcome. The story about the Essex is what inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. It's really quite incredible and gripping.

u/WhyImNotDoingWork · 1 pointr/movies
u/peds · 1 pointr/books

In the Heart of the Sea tells the true story that inspired Moby Dick, and is a great read.

If you like non-fiction, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage and The Perfect Storm are also very good.

u/whichever · 1 pointr/todayilearned

I'm from New England and never had a lobster 'til I went to Africa in my 30s :(

I would imagine this is true of lots of salt- and freshwater foods, oysters, scallops, crabs, tuna, salmon...I'm not real sure about the state of the lobster population, but I think high prices for this kind of stuff can be a good thing (depending on how the money is used and the fishing is carried out).

Reminds me of something I read in In the Heart of the Sea, an awesome book about the shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick, but also more generally about the Nantucket Whaling industry. Nantucket was the world's whaling capital in the early 1800s, some days they could practically do their harpooning from the docks. A few decades later, they're sailing from Massachusetts to the Pacific to make their catches.

Then again, I'm sure some of that pricing is just high because it can be. There are weeds in my yard that fetch insane prices at microgreeneries and heirloom farms.

u/dontspamjay · 1 pointr/audiobooks

Ghost in the Wires - The story of famed hacker Kevin Mitnick

Any Mary Roach Book if you like Science

In the Heart of the Sea - The true story behind Moby Dick

The Omnivore's Dilemma - A great walk through our food landscape

Gang Leader for a Day - Behavioral Economist embeds with a Chicago Gang

Shadow Divers - My first audiobook. It's a thriller about a scuba discovery of a Nazi Submarine on the Eastern US coast.

The Devil In The White City - A story about a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893

u/lilkuniklo · 0 pointsr/suggestmeabook

"Smart" people learn to deal with boredom. Being educated takes rigor and a drive to appreciate things for more than just the plot.

This means you will be frequently bored sifting through some painfully tedious prose, but the payoff is that your brain will get some practice at synthesizing information and not just regurgitating surface-level stuff than any rube can pull out of a novel or a popsci book.

That said, I can't recommend the r/askhistorians booklist enough. This list was assembled by people who are experts in their fields and the books are mostly scholarly in nature, so they can be pretty dense, but they are highly informative and well-researched. You can be assured that these are people who follow the sources so the information is

I also recommend reading Moby Dick and following along with NYU's recorded lecture. It's slow and difficult to follow along with at times but it's a seminal work of American literature. Many would argue that it's America's first modern novel.

Plus it's just a manly fucking book. And after you finish reading it, you can follow up with In the Heart of the Sea for historical context. This is one of the few pop history books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Philbrick is an excellent writer and his sources are accurate.

Final recommendation would be The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Ginsburg translation).

Both Master and Margarita and Moby Dick are novels with philosophical themes, but I would say that Master and Margarita is more readable on its own, and Moby Dick is better if you follow the lecture that I linked.