Up from the Depths - by Aaron Sachs

Book Synopsis

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography

A double portrait of two of America's most influential writers that reveals the surprising connections between them--and their uncanny relevance to our age of crisis

Up from the Depths tells the interconnected stories of two of the most important writers in American history--the novelist and poet Herman Melville (1819-1891) and one of his earliest biographers, the literary critic and historian Lewis Mumford (1895-1990). Deftly cutting back and forth between the writers, Aaron Sachs reveals the surprising resonances between their lives, work, and troubled times--and their uncanny relevance in our own age of crisis.

The author of Moby-Dick was largely forgotten for several decades after his death, but Mumford helped spearhead Melville's revival in the aftermath of World War I and the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, when American culture needed a forebear with a suitably dark vision. As Mumford's career took off and he wrote books responding to the machine age, urban decay, world war, and environmental degradation, it was looking back to Melville's confrontation with crises such as industrialization, slavery, and the Civil War that helped Mumford to see his own era clearly. Mumford remained obsessed with Melville, ultimately helping to canonize him as America's greatest tragedian. But largely forgotten today is one of Mumford's key insights--that Melville's darkness was balanced by an inspiring determination to endure.

Amid today's foreboding over global warming, racism, technology, pandemics, and other crises, Melville and Mumford remind us that we've been in this struggle for a long time. To rediscover these writers today is to rediscover how history can offer hope in dark times.

Review Quotes

"Sach's parallel biography is more than just a compendium of information. . . . [Up from the Depths] transforms our reading into a lived experience, inspiring us to rediscover connections with and between the two kindred spirits and renew our energy to confront our present concerns, with all their difficulties and uncertainties."---Maki Sadahiro, Leviathan

"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"

"[A] unique investigation of parallel lives. . . . Sachs's chapters interweave periods of the two men's lives, creating a dappled effect of shared shadows and light. Certain biographical overlaps are particularly striking."---Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"[Sachs] weaves the two writers' contrapuntal historical dialog into a single narrative, a reading experience enhanced by Sachs' fluent, often-lyrical writing skills."---Kevin Lynch, Culture Currents

"A rich double portrait of Herman Melville and Lewis Mumford. . . . [Sachs's] voice is exact, good-humored and passionate--all the qualities we need in our own dark times."---James Marcus, Times Literary Supplement ​​​​​​​

"An incisive homage to the continuing relevance of two towering writers. . . . A well-informed, thoughtful dual biography."-- "Kirkus Reviews, starred review"

"An inspired study of [Melville and Mumford], juxtaposing their lives and works in alternating chapters. . . . What draws Sachs to [these writers] is the dialectic in each between continuity and disruption, confidence and despair."---Steven G. Kellman, American Scholar

"Excellent. . . . A braided account of Melville and Mumford, aimed at exploring the strange resonance between their times and ours."---Daniel Immerwahr, Slate

"Fascinating. . . . In shining a light on Mumford's efforts during the 'Melville Revival' of the mid-1900s, Sachs makes a strong case for the rediscovery of Mumford's own writing. . . . A well-executed literary history."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography"

"Illuminating."---Allison Gilbert, BUST

"Rare and remarkable."---Jennie Hann, National Book Critics Circle

"Sachs deftly draws our attention mutually to these two great writers, and the resonances between their work, one in literature and the other in urban planning and a hope for civilized progress."---Donald Brackett, Critics at Large

"Sachs has written a sort of palimpsest of biography itself, showing how, generation by generation, we begin to see through the traffic between past and present that leads to the rediscovery of figures like Melville and Mumford, who wanted for themselves and their progeny (which includes us) a recognition that going backward can also be a way of going forward."---Carl Rollyson, New York Sun

"Sachs manages a set of impressive balancing acts: matching scholarly diligence with fluent, stylish prose; admiration for his subjects with an alertness to their flaws. Up from the Depths packs multiple books into one: an introduction to Mumford's thought, an innovative study of Melville, and a history of the modern age through the eyes of two uniquely perceptive writers."---Madoc Cairns, The Observer

"Sachs's 'willingness to flash back and forth in time' leaves readers with a subtle, poignant, understanding of the relationship between the past, present, and future. Sachs also offers his readers a tether for those who feel unmoored and alone as a result of modernity. By telling 'the story of [these] two modern wanderers' Sachs shows us the possibility of connection despite the years and the changing circumstances that separate [Melville and Mumford]."---Natalie Fuehrer Taylor, Law & Liberty

"This fascinating book explores the connection between two American writers, novelist Herman Melville (1819-91) and Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), the novelist's biographer. In brief, lively, and engaging chapters, Sachs . . . alternates back and forth between the two men, detailing many correspondences in their lives and work despite the years that separated them. . . . Sachs provides sensitive analysis of text and context, offers a wealth of resources in his bibliography, and models how historians and critics can pose questions that continue to matter."-- "Choice"

About the Author

Aaron Sachs is professor of history and American studies at Cornell University. He is the author of The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism and Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition.