“An interesting story about an interesting man, told in a most entertaining fashion. A real page turner” Dr Bob Allota, coauthor, “The Last Voyage of the SS Henry Bacon” In Waves Astern, E. Spurgeon Campbell recalls eight decades of adventures to exotic and sometimes isolated destinations while serving his country. At 20, Campbell was a radio operator in the Merchant Marine during World War II, later surviving enemy attacks and the sinking of the Henry Bacon whose “cargo” was a group of Norwegian refugees. Campbell recalls the February night in a lifeboat in the Arctic filled with terrified refugees, his efforts to send SOS signals in gale-force winds, and of their miraculous rescue. Decades later, he and the survivors were reunited when he was honored by the Norwegian government. Campbell’s odyssey includes “Cold War” episodes in Eniwetok and Thule, Greenland and a 20-year career with Radio Free Europe.

This book unfurls and examines the anti-slavery allegory at the subtextual core of Herman Melville’s famed novel, Moby-Dick. Brian Pellar points to symbols and allusions in the novel such as the albinism of the famed whale, the “Ship of State” motif, Calhoun’s “cords,” the equator, Jonah, Narcissus, St. Paul, and Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan. The work contextualizes these devices within a historical discussion of the Compromise of 1850 and subsequently strengthened Fugitive Slave Laws. Drawing on a rich variety of sources such as unpublished papers, letters, reviews, and family memorabilia, the chapters discuss the significance of these laws within Melville’s own life. After clarifying the hidden allegory interconnecting black slaves and black whales, this book carefully sheds the layers of a hidden meaning that will be too convincing to ignore for future readings: Moby-Dick is ultimately a novel that is intimately connected with questions of race, slavery, and the state.

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.