Deeply empathetic and richly reported, The Last Whalers is a riveting, powerful chronicle of the collision between one of the planet's dwindling indigenous peoples and the irresistible enticements and upheavals of a rapidly transforming world.

Like a first-rate novel, too, “The Last Whalers” has an abiding but unforced theme. It’s about the flood of modernity, in the form of outboard motors and cellphones and televised soap operas, as seen from the perspective of a curious but wary society that fears losing itself in the deluge. stars. As an Indonesian, I am glad this book is written. There are not many books out there about Indonesia's marine communities and culture, let alone the Lamalerans in Lembata Island, East Nusa Tenggara Province. First of all, I like that the narrative is using the POVs of Lamalerans. They could be very, very detailed, from constructing the tenas (the whaling boats) to household duties. I enjoy being immersed like that. There are many types of POVs: Jon the aspiring lamafa (main harpooner), Ika his sister (I love her parts about the traditional market and bartering practice), Ignatius the old harpooner, Frans the shaman & shipwright, Bena the Katy Perry fan girl, and many more. As someone who grew up in the concrete jungle of Jakarta and part of one ethnic minority group, I feel like there are still so many facets and types of lives in my own country that are completely different from mine and considering the fact that we have more than 300 ethnic groups and 700++ languages, my own life experience is basically nothing. A gripping story of a community struggling for its very survival, and of the clash between ancient and modern worlds. Clark has a graceful, almost poetic writing style, and his vivid portrait of the Lamalerans and their way of life evokes in the reader a stirring image of a lost world, an ancient society that has somehow stayed virtually untouched by the march of time...until now."-- David Pitt, Booklist Clark respects their traditions and way of life, noting that we should honor all cultures and be able to take the best each has to offer, learning from each other, cultural diversity perhaps essential to the survival of humanity. The loss of a culture is as permanent as the loss of a life, but rather than one star darkening, it is a whole constellation burning out. It is the disappearance of every soul that has constituted it. It is the end of a past and a future.Clark is hardly the first observer to study Lamaleran culture. Anthropologists and documentary filmmakers and others have been here before. But he brings empathy and literary skill to bear. This is a humbly told book, one in which the author’s first-person voice does not intrude. An immersive and absorbing chronicle that takes the reader deep into the lives of this tribe and is told with a richness of interior detail that renders their lives, and the choices they face, not just comprehensible but somehow familiar... Clark's writing about the ocean and its creatures is superb, so vivid that the reader can feel the sting of salt water up the nose...The magic in this work is Clark's decision to cede the story over to the Lamalerans themselves. In doing so, he captures the drama of the tribe as it attempts to navigate new opportunities that, while enticing, may bring about the extinction of their culture...Whether that culture will, in the end, withstand mounting pressures from the outside remains to be seen. If it doesn't, The Last Whalers will at least document all that has been lost."-- Gabriel Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle Lembata, in Southeast Asia, is home to the Lamalerans who arrived there 500 years ago. They settled on the beach under a cliff, surviving by fishing for sperm whale and Manta ray and flying fish. Those who are successful in the hunt share with aging family members and community members. They are one of the few hunter-gatherer societies left in the world. But industrialized society is crowding in on them. Their children are enticed to the cities for education and jobs. Some remain for the air conditioning and running water. Outboard motors and smaller boats are replacing the handcrafted boats propelled by oar and the young carry cell phones.

The stories of the Lamalerans themselves are even more gripping--from a young orphaned whaler waiting for his big break to an aging legendary harpooner struggling to understand his son’s resistance to the traditional way of life. They bravely stand up to the forces of modernization, largely refusing modern technology that would make the hunts easier and far less dangerous, and relying on bartering and gift-giving instead of paper currency. They hold on to the ways of their ancestors, believing that their tradition--however inconvenient--contains their essence, and that by giving it up, they may lose what it means for them to live.The existential conflicts were reflected in the occupational decisions of the individual Lamalerans, in particular the younger generation. I'd have liked more older female perspectives though as the narrative felt overall to be quite male-centric. By the book's end, Clark advocated that it is an ethical imperative to preserve traditional cultures and thereby to protect the earth's most vulnerable peoples. ... globalization has been an immensely inequitable process, with its greatest rewards flowing to the elite capable of capturing them, while vast swaths of the 370 million indigenous people worldwide have emerged worse off -- deprived of their ancestral livelihoods and support networks in exchange for the lethal poverty of urban slums or plantations. When whales are sighted by the Lamalerans, a chant rises (“ Baleo! Baleo!”) and is passed from house to house. The men race for their boats, which traditionally have been wooden ships called téna. They urge each other to “Row like you want to feed your families!” Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues. Over three years, Clark spent a year living with the Lamalerans, participating as a community member, even eating manta ray brains. There’s a lot going on in this feat of journalism, but at heart it’s about a whaling community. Clark does not stint on beautiful, terrible, blood-streaked accounts of hunting sperm whales.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.” On a volcanic island in the Savu Sea so remote that other Indonesians call it "The Land Left Behind" live the Lamalerans: a tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who are the world's last subsistence whalers. They have survived for half a millennium by hunting whales with bamboo harpoons and handmade wooden boats powered by sails of woven palm fronds. But now, under assault from the rapacious forces of the modern era and a global economy, their way of life teeters on the brink of collapse. Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Lamalera has also attracted the unwanted attention of conservation groups. In 2017, for example, the Nature Conservancy began working with the Indonesian government on a push to limit the hunt, arguing that the introduction of motorboats meant the Lamalerans had already given up their traditional culture. There is a dark irony here, that having escaped colonialism for five centuries, the Lamalerans could be forced to lay down their harpoons by the neocolonial effects of conservation. “For the Lamalerans, the very idea of conservation is foreign,” writes Clark, and they’re not wrong to be dubious. “History has shown time and again that depriving indigenous people of their livelihoods often leads directly to their end, as they lose their identities within a generation.” The Last Whalers is an absolutely extraordinary work. Clark’s portrayal of the Lamalerans, a hunter-gatherer tribe inhabiting a remote Indonesian island, is both fascinating and moving. He expertly shows how the Lamalerans hunt the largest carnivore in history, the sperm whale, using centuries-old technology. By having lived amongst the tribe across three years, the author is able to describe the hunts in stunning and dramatic detail, with the insight of someone intimately familiar with not only the mechanics of the process, but also the history, culture, and people of Lamalera. A forceful debut...Clark's prose soars...Furthermore, his sympathy for and devotion to his subjects is real: he speaks both Indonesian and Lamaleran and fosters an intimacy that allows him to disappear entirely in the telling of their story. He brings us into his characters' lives, showing us the rhythms of Lamalera and the day-to-day tensions the villagers face...Clark successfully depicts these people in their full human complexity rather than as primitive tropes... His finely wrought, deeply reported, and highly empathetic account is a human-level testament to dignity in the face of loss and a stoic adherence to cultural inheritance in the face of a rapidly changing world."-- Tim Sohn, Outside Magazine Estar de acuerdo con el estilo de vida de este pueblo no es el punto del libro, como sí es dar a conocer una cultura distinta. Y sobre todo, el libro es una crónica que expone como la globalización y el capitalismo está absorbiendo y destruyendo a muchas comunidades con culturas, idiomas y religiones diferentes y propias, la pérdida de riqueza humana que eso supone. Y cómo existe esta que, aún adoptando formas de vida modernas, se resisten a desaparecer para ser un pueblo más dentro del sistema actual y continuar siendo ellos mismos. Y los dilemas y enfrentamientos internos y externos que eso les supone. As subsistence whalers, their life is deeply entwined with the natural world, and the rhythms of that world. The description of the hunt, what an honor it is to be the harpooner of the whales, and the knowledge and skills needed to be successful, is compelling. The bravery of the crews, who hunt whales using traditional iron and bamboo harpoons to capture huge sperm whales, is astonishing. For someone from the Western world who is completely separated from the hunter/gatherer society its a brilliant picture of a different way of life.