"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," proclaimed Herman Melville, and the vivid story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history. Indeed, much of America's culture, economy, and even its spirit were literally and figuratively rendered from the bodies of whales. In Leviathan, the first one-volume history of American whaling in many decades, Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the epic battle between man and the sea — and, in this case, between man and beast — an often-violent struggle that animates the imagination and stirs our emotions.