A new account of Herman Melville and the writing of Moby-Dick, written by a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Biography and based on fresh archival research, which reveals that the anarchic spirit animating Melville's canonical work was inspired by his great love affair with a shockingly unconventional married woman.Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Beca...

One day in late 1906, seventy-one-year-old Mark Twain attended a meeting on copyright law at the Library of Congress. The arrival of the famous author caused the usual stir—but then Twain took off his overcoat to reveal a "snow-white" tailored suit and scandalized the room. His shocking outfit appalled and delighted his contemporaries, but far more than that, as Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Shelden shows in this wonderful new biography, Twain had brilliantly staged this act of showmansh...

Professor of English at Indiana State University and the author of the literary biography Mark Twain: Man in White, Michael Shelden is the perfect candidate to lead this series of lectures on one of the most important - and most influential - of all American authors. From Twain's early history through his landmark achievements and the defining moments of his extraordinary life, Shelden imparts a learned understanding of both the man and his astounding body of work.

Big Brother Is Watching You: The words are inextricably associated with the classic dystopian novel 1984 and with its revered author, George Orwell. The Modern Scholar series continues its exploration of great authors with this course from esteemed professor Michael Shelden. In these lectures Orwell, who also penned the epitome of the political satire, Animal Farm, is discussed in full, from his childhood in Henley-on-Thames to his final days.

The Lost Generation from Professor Michael Shelden evokes one of the most creative periods in American literature. Paris of the 1920s served as a base for such authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. In these lectures, Professor Shelden details and provides fresh insight into the unending allure of the Lost Generation-and of the literary output that exerts a continuing influence nearly a century later.