Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885-1950) was an American critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. He was the brother of Mark Van Doren and the uncle of Charles Van Doren. He earned a bachelor of arts from the University of Illinois in 1907 and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1911 and continued to teach there until 1930. He was a world federalist and once said, "It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it". Van Doren"s study The American Novel, published in 1921, is generally credited with helping to re-establish Herman Melville"s critical status as first-rate literary master. His works include: The Life of Thomas Love Peacock (1911), Contemporary American Novelists, 1900-1920 (1922), The Roving Critic (1923), James Branch Cabell (1925), The Ninth Wave (1926), Swift (1930), Sinclair Lewis (1933), Three Worlds (1936), Benjamin Franklin (1938), Secret History of the American Revolution (1941), Mutiny in January (1943),...