Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Summer Classics Talk with Richard King In-Person
Richard King compares Ahab's and Ishmael's worldviews to how we see the ocean today: an expanse still immortal and sublime, but also in crisis. Although the concept of stewardship of the sea would have been entirely foreign, if not absurd, to Melville, King argues that Melville's narrator Ishmael reveals his own tendencies toward what we would now call environmentalism. King join us for a discussion on Zoom for a journey through Melville's natural history masterpiece.
Richard J. King is the author of five books of nonfiction about our relationship with the global ocean, including most recently Sailing Alone: A History, which received the silver medal in literature from the National Outdoor Book Awards. He wrote Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick, lauded in Science, Nature, and American Scholar; Lobster, which was acclaimed by the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal; and The Devil's Cormorant: A Natural History, which was short-listed for the ASLE Creative Book Award and rated as one of the top five science books of 2013 by Library Journal.
- Date:
- Wednesday, July 15, 2026
- Time:
- 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Location:
- Board Room
- Audience:
- Adults
- Categories:
- Lecture/Speaker