Two Years Before the Mast is a classic travel narrative which inspired canonical works like Moby Dick and Sailing Alone Around the World. As he follows Richard Henry Dana Jr. (a Harvard dropout-turned-sailor) on his voyages around North America (encountering racial injustices and struggling through the battered life of a foremast crewman), Rod Scher annotates his tale with critiques, tie-ins to today, and little-known facts about both th and the milieu of Dana’s time.