The Essex disaster is the subject of Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, up for a National Book Award this week. I gather that Philbrick’s competition in the category of nonfiction is the great literary critic Jacques Barzun. All the same, it will be a shame if In the Heart of the Sea doesn’t win. Not only is it a thumping good read, more so even than your average first-rate humdinger of a sea-disaster story; it’s also an interesting piece of cultural criticism. In Philbrick’s book, everything one has never really understood about Moby Dick—why Ahab was kicking up such a rumpus Continue reading

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