A Whaler at Twilight

A unique and engrossing duet format. Alex beautifully intertwines his great-great-grandfather Rob’s autobiographical account with reflections and thoroughly researched historical context. Rob’s fascinating account steeps readers in a mid-nineteenth-century whaler’s life and in Rob’s formative ten-year journey wrestling with his inner demons to find himself. Alex’s reflections and research deepen readers’ understanding of Rob, the time period, the South Pacific region and inhabitants Rob came into contact with, the whaling industry, and the cultural milieu.

A Whaler at Twilight is also a compelling bridge between the past and present as Alex shares his own journey retracing his great-great-grandfather’s footsteps in New Zealand and considers his and Rob’s differing paths and circumstances. The book ends with Alex’s reflections as a conservationist on man’s relationship with the natural world and its future. Readers can’t help but parallel and compare the grim realities of whaling in A Whaler at Twilight with man’s relationship with nature today.–Bradley Tusk, founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures; owner of P&T Knitwear Bookstore

Alexander R. Brash was born and raised in New York, NY. An early love for birds evolved into a passion for quantitative community ecology and then a devotion to conservation. Along the way he worked on Great Gull Island, in the American Museum of Natural History, and graduated from Buckley School, Hotchkiss School, Connecticut College, Yale School for the Environment, and worked on a PhD at Rutgers University. After a hurricane wiped out his study site, he took a job with NYC Parks and rose to be the Chief Park Ranger, managing the agency’s uniformed officers, Natural Resource Group, Communications, Historic House Trust, and Special Events. At NYC Parks he initiated the Forever Wild Project, now 47 park preserves covering over 8,700 acres, Project X, the city’s first program to re-introduce extirpated species, and he was a first responder on 9⁄11. After nearly two decades in New York, he joined the National Parks Conservation Association as the Northeast Regional Director lobbying for our national parks, particularly bringing attention to the system’s urban parks and cultural icons, as well as initiating the effort to establish Katahdin Woods, Stonewall Inn, and Patterson Falls as new National Parks. Alex then spent three years as President of Connecticut Audubon, which he re-invigorated by moving its finances into the black, tripling its endowment, doubling the size of its nature preserves, and re-aligning its educational programs with STEM. Retired in Connecticut, he has been consulting, writing, traveling, birding, and spending time with family. Happily married to Jane, they have two great children, Ian and Emily.

Robert W. Armstrong was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1828, the only child of William and Rebecca Armstrong. After attending the esteemed Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, the world’s first dental school, he served for a short while as a dentist in the Midwest and the South. He then spent ten years in the South Pacific as a whaler and a logger before returning to Baltimore and starting a second career as a store clerk. He worked at his uncle’s firm Armstrong, Cator and Co. Soon after, he married Eudocia Muller and together they opened their own successful millinery store on Lexington Street. With Eudocia ultimately managing the store, Robert became more involved in church and community affairs later in his life. Robert and Eudocia had eight children. He died peacefully in 1902 and lies with his family in Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

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