TY - BOOK AU - Philip Hoare TI - Leviathan SN - 9780007340910 AV - QL737.C4 U1 - 599.5 PB - HarperCollins Publishers Limited KW - Animals KW - Adventure N2 - This edition does not include illustrations. The story of a man's obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey - from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching. All his life, Philip Hoare has been obsessed by whales, from the gigantic skeletons in London's Natural History Museum to adult encounters with the wild animals themselves. Whales have a mythical quality - they seem to elide with dark fantasies of sea-serpents and antediluvian monsters that swim in our collective unconscious. In 'Leviathan', Philip Hoare seeks to locate and identify this obsession. What impelled Melville to write 'Moby-Dick'? After his book in 1851, no one saw whales in quite the same way again. This book is an investigation into what we know little about - dark, shadowy creatures who swim below the depths, only to surface in a spray of spume. More than the story of the whale, it is also the story of our own obsessions. , it is also the story of our own obsessions ER -