Up from the Depths

By Aaron Sachs,

Book cover of Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times

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…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

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.  

Want books like Up from the Depths?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Up from the Depths.

Browse books like Up from the Depths

Book cover of Things Fall Apart
Book cover of The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World
Book cover of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,187

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in art, the Spanish flu, and World War 1?

Art 941 books
The Spanish Flu 25 books
World War 1 933 books