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Message: [QUOTE="prankster, post: 5054848, member: 14"] Anything (everything) by Nathaniel Philbrick! Lots of folks like historical fiction. His stuff reads like exceptional historical fiction, except for one thing, it ain't fiction. "In the Heart of the Sea" was one hell of a yarn. It is the real life story of the whaleship Essex. Her story (sunk by a rogue whale in the Pacific) was the basis for Melville's Moby Dick. "Sea of Glory" was about the Expedition of the Exploration (1838-1842)⁹, wherein a small squadron of US Naval ships plied the Southern Ocean and the Pacific. They were the first to discover Antarctica. Charts they created were, in many instances, the only charts the US had of many Pacific Islands, at the start of WW 2. Their collections of specimens, (plants, bird's, and whatever else they collected) became the foundational collection of the Smithsonian Institution. It is the most extraordinary piece of US history that you never heard of. [/QUOTE]