Akron Public Library

"Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is considered by many readers to be the Great American Novel. But most don't know that since its appearance in 1851, it has been revised in substantial ways that alter its original meaning. Melville's masterpiece is described as a "fluid text": it exists in multiple versions, each revealing shifting intentions. The new Longman Critical Edition offers unprecedented access to the revisions that Melville made, the further...

In 1874, Brian Doyle records in his diary how he ran away from his home in San Francisco, joined the crew of a whaling ship, and endured storms, hostile shipmates, and being stranded in the Arctic.

While pursuing the stranger who ran off with Joe's basketball, Wishbone imagines himself to be the young sailor Ishmael on Captain Ahab's whaling ship chasing the great white whale, Moby Dick, across the seven seas.

An abridged retelling of the adventures of a young seaman when he joins the crew of the whaling ship Pequod, led by the fanatical Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale Moby Dick.

"In 1839, Herman Melville was among the New Yorkers who thrilled to a magazine account of a white sperm whale's attacks on whaling ships. That whale was named Mocha Dick, but 12 years later, he would be immortalized in fiction as Moby-Dick. Believed to have been active from 1810 to 1859, Mocha Dick was infamous for the ferocity of his retaliations against those who attempted to capture him. From the first recorded encounter near the South American...