genealogical tables, documentation, index. US $39.95, cloth; ISBN 0-8018-5428-8.

from his early life in Albany to his success as one of America's most popular writers of sea adven-tures at mid-century. This first volume ends in 1851, when Melville was thirty-two and his magnum opus, Moby-Dick, was about to reach print. At nearly nine hundred pages, this bio-graphy creates a complex, composite po rtrait of Melville, built from diverse and wide-ranging sources. One comes away from it feeling bulked up with a great knowledge of Melville and his family, their day to day activities, and the atmos-phere of local and national events within which they struggled. If at certain points one would wish for more incisive commentary to bring Melville's writing into focus, Parker compensates with com