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In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex-the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1819 the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

In the Heart of the Sea tells perhaps the greatest sea story ever. Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature. At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.

Taylor Mali is the former president of Poetry Slam, Inc., and one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement. He is the author of two books of poetry, What Learning Leaves and The Last Time as We Are, and four CDs of spoken word. He has appeared on the first two seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam and won the jury prize for best one-man show at the United States Comedy Arts Festival. A passionate advocate of teachers, he travels the country recruiting the next generation of teachers with his 1,000 Teachers Campaign. Taylor lives in New York.

Nathaniel Philbrick is the National Book Award-winning author of In the Heart of the Sea, Revenge of the Whale, Sea of Glory, and others. Philbrick has won numerous awards for his work, including the Massachusetts Book Award, the Albion-Monroe Award, and the New England Book Award; his book Mayflower was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. His book The Last Stand was named an ALA Notable Book and was the basis for a two-hour PBS American Experience film called Custer's Last Stand. A graduate of Duke and Brown Universities, he currently lives in New England.