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....