A WHALE'S TALE

This Thursday, the 21st of February, D. Graham Burnett will be speaking about his new book - Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature . The book concerns the 1818 case of Maurice v. Judd in which a Manhattan court attempted to decide if a whale was a fish or a mammal. From the Cabinet magazine interview: "The issues at play in the trial—human taxonomy, oceanic monstrosity, the interpretation of Genesis, atheistical French philosophy, power politics in the early Republic—turned a minor legal fracas into a major sensation."

This event will take place at Book Culture located at 536 W. 112th Street, Manhattan. Announcement (PDF)