Melville's influence has run deep this year, providing, among other things, the central motif for Moby-Duck, Donovan Hohn's quest narrative about 28,880 bath toys lost at sea in 1992. What begins as a seemingly whimsical search for rubber duckies spilled overboard in hurricane-force winds in the North Pacific becomes a primer in oceanography, a whale of an adventure tale and an eye-opening inquiry into the disturbing, growing environmental effects of plastic pollution and climate

—Heller McAlpin