Description: Herman Melville is widely considered to be one of America's greatest authors, and countless literary theorists and critics have studied his life and work. However, political theorists have tended to avoid Melville, turning rather to such contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to understand the political thought of the American Renaissance. While Melville was not an activist in the traditional sense and his philosophy is notoriously difficult to categorize, his work is neve
Brief description: Jason Frank is associate professor of government at Cornell University. He is the author of Constituent Moments: Enacting the People in Postrevolutionary America and Publius and Political Imagination and coeditor of Vocations of Political Theory.
Review Quotes:
Frank has put together a wonderful series of essays that capture the diversity of Melville's thought in all its intensity, complexity, and nuance. This is a fantastic book that is well deserving of the attention of political theorists, literary critics, and Melville scholars alike.
-- "Simon Stow, The College of William and Mary"