To Olson’s credit, he is the scholar who went to Melville’s archive—his notes, letters, and his own annotated book collection—to understand what Melville was thinking about when he wrote about the great white whale and Ahab. Melville brought his own merchant marine and whaling experience to the writing, but also a healthy dose of Shakespeare and myth. Interested in SPACE and TIME as the preconditions for Ahab’s obsession, he conceived of his quest as an antidemocratic revolt against the natural world. “To Melville it was not the will to be free but the will to overwhelm nature that lies at the bottom of us individuals and a people,” Olson writes. “Ahab is no democrat. Moby-Dick, antagonist, is only king of natural force, resource” (12). I appreciated the way Olson handled the many characters, as a Greek choir to Ahab’s tragedy, but also a floating, diverse nation.