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...

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.

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.

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.

“An absorbing and humane account . . . Mr. Herman is at pains to remind us that the Viking world was never just a stage for mayhem. It was, he says, ‘about daring to reach for more than the universe had gifted you, no matter the odds and the obstacles.’ In short: We might all take our own life’s cue from the Viking heart.”—The Wall Street JournalFrom a New York Times best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping epic of Vi...

A noted linguist examines extinct languages, from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the mysteries of as-yet undeciphered writings, in this scholarly work.While certain ancient languages were passed down continuously through the ages, many others were ignored for centuries. When scholars began to decipher these extinct languages in the early nineteenth century, they uncovered previously inaccessible riches of knowledge and history. Yet much work remains to be done on undeciphe...

A "hugely enjoyable" chronicle of the Adams, Quincy and Hancock families and how they helped spark the American Revolution ( Christian Science Monitor).Awarded the 2021 New England Society in the City of New York Book Award for Best Historical Nonfiction, American Rebels explores for the first time the intimate connections between three families in the lead up to the American Revolution. Author Nina Sankovitch examines the intertwined lives of John...

Longlisted for the Cundill History PrizeProfiled in The New YorkerNew York Times Book Review • Editors’ ChoiceVivid and magisterial, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen reconfigures the rise of a modern world through the advent and spread of written constitutions.A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutio...

A "well-told" insider account of the State Department's twenty-first-century struggle to defend America against malicious propaganda and disinformation ( The Washington Post).Disinformation is nothing new. When Satan told Eve nothing would happen if she bit the apple, that was disinformation. But today, social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious. In a disturbing turn of events, authoritarian governments are increasingly using it...

"A sweeping epic.… Promises to do for the war in the Pacific what Rick Atkinson did for Europe." —James M. Scott, author of RampageIn 1937, the swath of the globe east from India to the Pacific Ocean encompassed half the world’s population. Japan’s onslaught into China that year unleashed a tidal wave of events that fundamentally transformed this region and killed about twenty-five million people. This extraordinary World War II narrative vividly portrays ...

" Babel is an endlessly interesting book, and you don't have to have any linguistic training to enjoy it . . . it's just so much fun to read." —NPREnglish is the world language, except that 80 percent of the world doesn't speak it. Linguist Gaston Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world's people in their mother tongues, you'd need to know no fewer than twenty languages. In Babel, he sets out to explore these top twenty worl...