Billy Budd, Sailor

If Melville had never written "Moby Dick," his place in literature would have been assured by his short fiction. "Billy Budd, Sailor" is his last work and his masterpiece -- a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. In "Bartleby the Scivener," a Wall Street law clerk takes passive resistance to a comic -- and tragic -- extreme. Completing the beautiful collection are: "Benito Cerino, " "The Encantatas, " "The Plaza, " and finally, Melville s chilling science fiction parable, "The Bell Tower."