Subversive Genealogies by Michael Paul Rogin

This monograph contends that Melville's fiction was profoundly influenced by his family life, but that it also subverts the genealogies of his family life. I found the readings of Pierre and Moby Dick and the American 1848 (which I think is the beginning of the critical turn that looks at the Mexican-American War as a key periodization of American history) particularly persuasive, and I thought the book provided a good introduction to some of Melville's fictions with which I am not familiar.