DIVE DEEPER: Journeys with Moby-Dick (literary/cultural history; Oxford University Press) — Herman Melville’s epic tale of obsession has all the ingredients of a first rate drama-fascinating characters in solitude and society, battles between good and evil, a thrilling chase to the death-and yet its allusions, digressions, and sheer scope can prove daunting to even the most intrepid reader. George Cotkin’s Dive Deeper provides both a guide to the novel and a record of its dazzling cultural train. “Delving beneath the huge cultural shadows cast by Melville’s work, Cotkin reveals how many great writers, including Faulkner, Auden, and Masefield, have found inspiration in Melville’s novel. Cotkin also scrutinizes cinematic and television adaptions of Melville’s book, from the John Barrymore film, The Sea Beast, in 1926 to the Star Trek fantasy, The Wrath of Khan, in 1982. Even the playful treatment given Moby-Dick themes inPeanuts cartoons receives scrutiny! The 135 chapters may drift about as chaotically as the flotsam left when the Great Whale smashes the Pequod, but this flotsam has been pried from the depths, and it will thrill Melvilleans.” –Booklist