Winner of the 2015 Pencil/E.O. Wilson Literary Research Composing Award: “Horwitz’s dogged reporting…combined with sharp, cinematic writing, generates a robust narrative…. He offers written a reserve that is instructive and passionate and deserving a broad target audience” (Pencil Award Citation).

Six years in the making, War from the Whales is the “gripping detective story” (Publishers Weekly) of the crusading lawyer, Joel Reynolds, who stumbles using one of the united states Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine recognition program about War of the Whales: A GENUINE Tale that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound-and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal combat to expose and problem the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his study place in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is normally forced to select between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore towards the Navy in his youngsters.

“War of the Whales reads like the very best investigative journalism, with cinematic moments of strandings and dramatic David-and-Goliath courtroom dramas seeing that activists diligently hold the Navy accountable” (The Huffington Post). When Balcomb and Reynolds synergy to expose the reality behind an epidemic of mass strandings, the stage is set for an epic fight that pits admirals against activists, rogue submarines against weaponized dolphins, and nationwide security against the necessity to safeguard the sea environment. “Solid and useful” (The Washington Post), “brilliantly told” (Bob Woodward), author Joshua Horwitz combines the very best of legal theatre, natural history, and armed service intrigue to “raise serious queries about the unchecked usage of secrecy with the military to progress its institutional power” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).