Up from the Depths
Book description
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography
A double portrait of two of America's most influential writers that reveals the surprising connections between them-and their uncanny relevance to our age of crisis
Up from the Depths tells the interconnected stories of two of the most important writers…
Why read it?
1 author picked Up from the Depths as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Another Melville and another unusual one. Melville died broke and mostly forgotten. Lewis Mumford, a now mostly forgotten literary critic, is largely responsible for resuscitating Melville’s reputation in the early 20th century.
Sachs, an environmental historian who can really write, has penned a very unconventional, twinned biography of Melville and Mumford–the chapters go from one to the other, a style that takes some getting used to–that explores what it was about Melville’s dark vision of human nature, climate change, and capitalism that spoke to Mumford, and what it has to say to us.
From Robert's list on the intersection of fiction and history.
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