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Ever since a human being first came across a dead whale and realized it could provide vast amounts of meat and oil, men have hunted whales. For a thousand years, whales have been mines of oil, meat, baleen, ivory, leather, and ambergris.In this copiously illustrated book, Richard Ellis delineates the complex history of men and whales. He tells the story of the world's first commercial whalers, the Basques of tenth-century France and Spain; the birth of whaling as an industry during the settlement of New Zealand and Australia; the worldwide movement to protect the whale; and even the origins of the unicorn myth (a whale was responsible).This is the first comprehensive history of the whale's turbulent -- and always controversial -- relationship with humankind.