Moby Dick (100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature)

When Melville's Moby-Dick was published in 1851, it was "The work of a lunatic!'. It was the twentieth century that the adventure story of Captain Ahab's relentless pursuit of the white whale; a detailed account of a whaling voyage; a collection of wry, humorous observations about human nature gave Melville his rightful place in writing.