A romance behind Moby-Dick? Researcher provides compelling case
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When you get your morning coffee, you might not realize that Starbuck’s is named for the first mate in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Starbuck is the voice of sanity when confronted by Captain Ahab’s madness. Getting your coffee anywhere else, advertisers suggest, would be crazy.

Forgotten for nearly a century after his death, Melville lived his later years working on the New York docks and was listed in The New York Times obituary section in minor detail. But, at one time, he was considered America’s first literary sex symbol, a perception solidified with his first works, Typee and Omoo, which recount his adventures in the Polynesian Islands, cavorting with the cannibals and frolicking with the native ladies naked in the waters. He said he felt like a “happy dog.”