A single novel, an eternal classic, established him as a founding father of American literature. Now, a century after his death, a popular surge of interest in Melville calls for Hardwick's rich analysis of "the whole of Melville's works, uneven as it is, and the challenging shape of his life...a story of the creative history of an extraordinary American genius."Hardwick's superb interpretation reveals a former whale ship deckhand whose voyages were the stuff of travel romances that seduced the public. Later, a self-described "thought-diver" into "the truth of the human heart", Melville harbored a bitterness that knew no bounds when that same public failed to embrace his masterwork, Moby Dick.