"Instead of greeting their rescuers with smiles of relief, the survivors - - - were disturbed, even frightened. They jealously clutched the splintered and gnawed-over bones with a desperate, almost feral intensity, refusing to give them up, like two starving dogs found trapped in a pit."

Philbrick's gripping narrative is both the story of Nantucket - now a popular tourist destination - and a story of survival. Nantucket was a Quaker community, where everyone (including children) spoke with nautical terms, and women (largely more educated than men) took care of the children and ran the businesses when the men were at sea. In 1819, the whaleship Essex left the harbor, and 15 months later, an unusually aggressive sperm whale sank the ship. Due to indecisive Captain Pollard and the more assertive first mate Chase, the men ended up trying to sail almost 3000 miles away to South America in three small boats.

If you were queasy during the preface, you'll have an awful time. Whaling is a gruesome process, but there's also the fact that when food runs out, you're forced to make uncomfortable decisions. Instead of continuing to wait who would perish next and give them their next ration, the men later resorted to drawing lots, which decided who would be sacrificed for the common good. In the end, 8 crew members out of 20 survived. All eight went back to sea in a couple of months.