Handsomely Done: Aesthetics, Politics, and Media after Melville brings together leading and emerging scholars from comparative literature, critical theory, and media studies to examine Melville’s works in light of their ongoing afterlife and seemingly permanent contemporaneity. The volume explores the curious fact that the works of this most linguistically complex and seemingly most “untranslatable” of authors have yielded such compelling translations and adaptations as well as the related tendency of Melville’s writing to flash into relevance at every new historical-political conjuncture. The volume thus engages not only Melville reception across media (Jorge Luis Borges, John Huston, Jean-Luc Godard, Led Zeppelin, Claire Denis) but also the Melvillean resonances and echoes of various political events and movements, such as the Attica uprising, the Red Army Faction, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. This consideration of Melville’s afterlife opens onto theorizations of intermediality, un/translatability, and material intensity even as it also continually faces the most concrete and pressing questions of history and politics.

Handsomely Done: Aesthetics, Politics, and Media is an edited collection of essays by leading and emerging scholars from the fields of comparative literature, critical theory, and media studies that examines Melville's works in light of their ongoing afterlife and seemingly permanent relevance--Provided by publisher.

"New Worlds for Old" (1908), which appeared in some later editions with the subtitle "A Plain Account of Modern Socialism," was one of several books and pamphlets that famed author and Nobel Literature Prize winner H. G. Wells wrote about the socialist future in the period 1901-1908, while he was engaged in an effort to reform the Fabian Society. As a result of Wells's earlier books and articles, he was "bombarded with requests for article pieces on socialism." Many of the chapters of 'New Worlds for Old' are reworked versions of these pieces.

Born in Philadelphia on December 3, 1826, George B. McClellan graduated from West Point in 1846 before serving in the Mexican War. At the start of the Civil War, McClellan was put in a position of leadership and after a successful campaign in Virginia he was given command of the Army of Potomac, one of the Union's strongest armies. He led the Peninsular campaign with almost 100,000 troops under his command. marching toward Richmond. Although McClellan was a brilliant administrator who possessed good strategic sense, the record shows that he was overcautious and consistently overestimated the strength of his adversaries, always demanding more men and supplies before undertaking offensive action. In 1862, McClellan disagreed with Abraham Lincoln and advanced on Richmond from the east instead of moving directly, against the Confederates at Manassas, Virginia. Although the Union army was successful during the Peninsular campaign, their failure to take Richmond, the Confederate capital, gave the South new motivation. Dissatisfied with the campaign and McClellan, Lincoln replaced him with Henry W. Halleck as commander-in-chief. After the defeat of the Union army. in the Second Battle of Bull Run, . he was again placed in active command of the Army of the Potomac. His overcautiousness at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, led to a draw instead of a Union victory. Because of the heavy Union losses, he was again relieved of his command by Lincoln for the duration of the war. The Democratic Party nominated McClellan in 1864 as its candidate for president a peace platform, but Abraham Lincoln defeated him. After serving as governor of New Jersey From 1878 to 1881, McClellan died in Orange. New Jersey on October 29, 1885.