Eric Jay Dolin, author of ‘Leviathan: the history of whaling in America’, will discuss the ‘iron men in wooden boats’ who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales when he appears in the Brenner Friends Room at the Rockport Public Library on Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 7:00 p.m.

The book begins with Capt. John Smith’s botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614, then chronicles the rise of whaling to the mid-1800s when more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, and records its decline at the beginning of the 20th century. Dolin’s social and economic history relates accounts of the men who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is regarded as the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.

A resident of Marblehead, Eric Jay Dolin is a graduate of Brown University and holds advanced degrees from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and MIT. He has published several books and more than 60 articles on environmental topics in magazines, newspapers, and professional journals. The Meet the Author series is co-sponsored by Toad Hall Bookstore and the Rockport Public Library.