Moby-Dick

By Herman Melville,

Book cover of Moby-Dick

Book description

Melville's tale of the whaling industry, and one captain's obsession with revenge against the Great White Whale that took his leg. Classics Illustrated tells this wonderful tale in colourful comic strip form, offering an excellent introduction for younger readers. This edition also includes a biography of Herman Melville and study…

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Why read it?

22 authors picked Moby-Dick as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is my candidate for the Great American Novel. Read it for its storyline and its fascinating chapters on whales. Along the way, you’ll encounter discussions about race, religion, friendship, and the virtuous life.

Some of my students ask, “Why does Melville digress so much?” My response: persist in reading this work. What at first seems extraneous becomes vital. You’ll discover a masterpiece.

From Marc's list on American intellectual history.

I could almost smell the sea and feel the spray on my face when I read this great American classic from 1851. I only discovered it recently when it was our book club choice and I’m wondering now why it took me so long!

Melville draws on his experience working on a whaling ship and his writing is about the oceans is so descriptive. D. H. Lawrence called it ""the greatest book of the sea ever written" and I’d agree. I loved the detailed and realistic accounts of whaling and life aboard ship.

I also learned a lot from the…

From Sue's list on to read on a cruise vacation.

It centers on and celebrates becoming—molting from one skin to another. For Ishmael this is a transition from a tired and limiting worldview to something fresh and alive.

The “bosom buddies” at the heart of the novel, Ishmael and Queequeg, seem comprised of opposites, but Ishmael’s etherealizing is grounded by Queequeg’s pragmatic ingenuity in ways that quiet and expand the young pagan-Presbyterian’s buzzing, anxious mind. Theirs is a friendship of succor, probably sex, and survival—all of it shadowed by the delusional obsessions of their mad captain.

We always look at the positive aspect of leadership—the ability to motivate, enhance commitment, and focus others on a core dream or mission. We aspire to the charismatic aspect of leadership.

But, all too often, leadership can also lead to the abyss, to an obsession. It can take your organization or your world in a singular direction—undaunted by reality, dominated by obsession. These are the leaders who aspire but never adjust. These are the leaders who may motivate but, in their commitment and obsession, destroy everything around them.

Ahab is such a leader, and Moby Dick is the greatest book…

Moby-Dick is a true classic and an extraordinary book. I own a beautiful, old copy of it and I read this literary masterpiece more than once in my life, including last month. And not just because it’s one of the greatest books of all time, but also because I am a marine biologist who has studied whales and dolphins for many years!

The narration of this epic (and a bit intimidating) piece of literature - dated back to 1851, is poetic. I read mostly nonfiction books but, at times, I discover a fiction book that truly engages me. Moby dick…

Incredibly, I had never read Moby-Dick until spending weeks at sea every summer, so Melville’s Great American Novel, which D.H. Lawrence called “one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world” found me on the boat. 

My book has been dubbed “the Moby-Dick of empty-nest tales” since my husband and I sail off in search of a rare white bear, inspired by Melville’s great white whale. I had no idea how funny and captivating Moby-Dick was – not to mention inspiring for armchair seafarers – until I settled in with its pages that first summer. It’s a brilliant…

Moby-Dick is one of those dusty old classics that we feel like we’re supposed to read that when you actually read it turns out to be genuinely goddamn fun.

The book is about—well, it’s about so many goddamn things, including melancholy, the American dream, and the history of whaling—but also it’s about the relationship between one dude and one whale, and the dude is obsessed with the whale and thinks the whale is his enemy, but the whale….well, the whale is a whale.

Is the whale really Ahab’s enemy, or is he more like Don Draper in that classic scene…

From Ben's list on malevolent beasts.

You have to call him Ishmael, and you have to come to love Ahab, and you have to remember that both of those names appear in the first five books of the Bible. In the mid-19th century, just the other side of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God way, it is not just a prophetic work, but the work of a prophet.

I reread the novel last summer and was reminded above all of how funny it is. Like, 19th-century American prophecy, but with a tone that at times almost feels like The Simpsons. So cartoonish!

From Daniel's list on prophetic American stories.

Moby-Dick obviously needs no recommendation, but every fan of a classic has a personal reason for loving it.

Mine is that it’s a sea novel and an allegory. I also lifted the names for two of my main characters in my book—Seth Macy and Walter Canny—from one of the marble tablets Ishmael sees at the Whaleman’s chapel in New Bedford, raised to the memory of lost crewmen “towed out of sight by a whale”. 

Melville’s novel allegorically blends the tales of Jonah and Job in such a wonderfully enjoyable way. It's a wonder from start to finish, but the chapter…

From Anthony's list on to read before hibernating.

Moby-Dick embodies the allure of sea stories – the coinciding feelings of adventure, horror, and awe; the battles of man vs. nature; the dangerous journeys.

Ishmael is a perfect protagonist, an outsider drawn to the ocean, while Ahab is a fascinating embodiment of obsession and emotion. But Mr. Starbuck is the character who has influenced countless of my own – someone trying to do what is right while battling with his own demons and moral compass.

For me, there is no better setting than the sea to explore these themes. The crew of the Pequod are isolated from the world…

From Katie's list on to get lost at sea with.

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