Herman Melville's Moby Dick is perhaps the greatest of all American novels. The story of Captain Ahab's obsession with destroying the white whale that crippled him in a previous encounter, Moby Dick transcends its subject by exploring the bigger picture of man and his precarious and often contradictory relationship with the universe he inhabits, a universe of the greatest good and the most profound evil. It is a timeless epic parable that is by turns amusing and unsettling, but always fascinating. The vocal performances of a solid cast add to the listening excitement: Charlton Heston is Ahab'tyrannical, God-ridden, and consumed with his quest; Keir Dullea is the laconic and mysterious narrator, Ishmael, and George Rose delivers Father Mapple's tremendous call to the whaling men.