Collector"s Library On board the whaling ship "Pequod" a crew of wise men and fools, renegades, and seeming phantoms is hurled through treacherous seas by a crazed captain hell-bent on hunting down the mythic White Whale. As the "great flood-gates of the wonder-world" swing open, Melville transforms the little world of the whale-ship into a crucible where mankind"s fears, faith and frailties are pitted against a relentless fate. Teeming with ideas and imagery, and with its extraordinary, compressed intensity sustained by a buoyant, mischievous irony and by moments of exquisite beauty, Melville"s masterpiece is both a great American epic and one of the most profoundly imaginative creations in literary history.