With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd‎,‎ Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co‎-editor of ‎'‎Poetry Review‎'‎‎.‎ Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab‎'‎s quest to avenge the whale that ‎'‎reaped‎'‎ his leg‎.‎ The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic‎.‎ But it is also a hymn to democracy‎.‎ Bent as the crew is on Ahab‎'‎s appalling crusade‎,‎ it is equally the image of a co‎-operative community at work‎:‎ all hands dependent on all hands‎,‎ each individual responsible for the security of each‎.‎ Among the crew is Ishmael‎,‎ the novel‎'‎s narrator‎,‎ ordinary sailor‎,‎ and extraordinary reader‎.‎ Digressive‎,‎ allusive‎,‎ vulgar‎,‎ transcendent‎,‎ the story Ishmael tells is above all an education‎:‎ in the practice of whaling‎,‎ in the art of writing‎.‎ Expanding to equal his ‎'‎mighty theme‎'‎ ‎- not only the whale but all things sublime ‎- Melville breathes in the world‎'‎s great literature‎.‎ Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American‎.‎