Manual of the Grasses of the United States, Vol. 2 Book

I read this book because I'm headed to San Ignacio next week and hoped to learn more about the whales. But this book is about the humans, about how the author reacts to the whales, how whalers in the 1800s reacted to the whales, how the Mexicans react to the whales, how the Siberian and Alaskan first people react to the whales, the scientists that study the whales. There are poems and art and singing school children. Very little about the whales themselves.

This book is all about the "I" of the author and his emotional journey and how he felt looking into the eye of the whale. And with this kind of book you need to really like the author because it's all about him and I didn't. It doesn't help that I see a pattern that people involved with whales as being very star struck, very concern with celebrity -- then I had lunch with Lauren Hutton, the I spent two hours with Christopher Reeves, two days with Bobby Kennedy, Pierce Brosnan was very pissed -- and I just don't care.

I just wish there was more about the gray whales in this book.