By 1760, the Nantucketers had virtually exterminated the local whale population. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
More than 25 miles off the coast of Massachusetts and only 14 miles long, Nantucket is, as Herman Melville wrote in ‘Moby-Dick,’ ‘away off shore.’ Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
It is impossible to say when 37-year-old Benedict Arnold first met 18-year-old Peggy Shippen, but we do know that on September 25, 1778, he wrote her a love letter – much of it an exact copy of one he’d sent to another woman six months before. But if the overheated rhetoric was recycled, Arnold’s passion was genuine. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
Most Americans have no clue that before there were highways, there were only waterways to get through the wilderness. If you weren’t on a lake or a river, you were in a jungle. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad’s an English professor. After a year there, I was like, ‘Jesus. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be in the library.’ So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
We’ve got a yawl named the Phebe, which is named for a boat in a whaling journal my father and I edited. We keep a copy of the journal on board. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
Moby-Dick’ has a remarkable way of resonating with whatever is going on in the world at that particular moment. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
XTC is my favorite band; I’m a huge Neil Young fan, Jayhawks, all that type of stuff. I like Death Cab for Cutie, also Ryan Adams. I try to impress my children: ‘Have you listened to such-and-such?’ They’re not impressed. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I’ve got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I’ve got to see what he does. Nathaniel Philbrick Read Quote
