Eric Jay Dolin's readable "Leviathan: the History of Whaling in America"

Leviathan: the History of American Whaling, by Eric Jay Dolin (Norton, 2007)

Full of detail and scenery, I found this an earnest, very readable history of whaling in America, with much of the book describing the destinies and fortunes of whalers in the ports of Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts during whaling's heyday (about 1830 to 1860).

I was surprised to learn how important whale oil was to American industry, and to the history of American industry in general. It was the best lighting fuel in the world, and made life at night possible in cities all over America and Europe. There were other important products that came from whales -- ladies' corsets get mentioned a lot. But it was chiefly whale oil that industrialists and financiers made big money on.

Dolin navigates away from the moral issues that moves modern Americans, whether it's right to kill these wild, large, warm blooded mammals, and kill them nearly to extinction. He reports without contradicting the prevailing philosophy of people of the seventeenth and nineteenth century -- that these animals were meant to be hunted and harvested. I think that's fair, despite how I feel about whale hunting.

It's well researched, sometimes reading a little like an academic work. Dolin includes 75 pages of often interesting footnotes.