‘Moby-Dick’ inspired the Warner Brothers film starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab – and perhaps can inspire readers today amid the climate crisis.
Fox Photos/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
While clear-eyed about the country’s injustices, Melville never succumbed to cynicism. On the author’s bicentennial, American readers could use a dose of his ability to fuse realism with idealism.
The young aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, sketch by an unknown artist.
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University