On November 14, 1851, Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick was first published in the United States. The story of Captain Ahab's obsessive quest for the great white whale Moby Dick is a classic of American literature and the work for which Melville is best remembered; its first sentence, "Call me Ishmael," is one of the best-known first lines in literature.

It wasn't always that way, though. During his lifetime, Melville's most popular novel was his first, published in 1846. Typee (e-book | e-audio | print | audio) was a romanticized mix of memoir, travelogue, and fiction based on the month Melville had spent living in the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific. It was popular enough that Melville wrote a sequel, Omoo (e-book | print), also based on his experiences in the South Pacific. His next few novels were less well received by both the critics and the public, and as Melville began work on Moby Dick (e-book | e-audio | print | audio), he was yet again in the position of needing a success.

As with Typee and Omoo, Melville drew on his own experiences for authenticity in Moby Dick. He had spent eighteen months on a whaling ship, which is how he wound up in the Marquesas. He was also inspired by stories of an enormous albino whale who was most commonly seen near Mocha Island, off the coast of Chile, and was known as Mocha Dick. Mocha Dick was said to have survived more than 100 encounters with whalers before finally being killed sometime in the late 1830s.

Further inspiration came from the tragedy of the Essex, a whaling ship from Nantucket that had been destroyed by a giant whale in 1820; only eight of the twenty-one crew members survived. First mate Owen Chase wrote a memoir of the whale attack (e-book | print). Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea (e-book | e-audio | print | audio) uses recently discovered documents to tell the story of the Essex; Chris Hemsworth stars in the movie adaptation of Philbrick's book.

Moby Dick was published in England about a month before its US publication. The British edition was in three volumes, under the title The Whale, and there were some textual differences. Most notably, the British edition did not include the novel's epilogue, in which the narrator, Ishmael, explains how he survived the destruction of the whaling ship Pequod in its climactic encounter with Moby Dick. That left many of the British critics confused as to how Ishmael could be narrating a novel which he did not survive, which would have been a more serious violation of literary convention in 1850 than it would be today. Despite that concern, English critics generally praised the book.

Sadly, Melville probably never saw those reviews, and the reception of the novel in America was less enthusiastic, in part because it had fewer educated and experienced critics. The young country had not yet developed a culture of serious literary criticism, and many of the local newspaper writers who served as critics were simply overwhelmed by the book.

And that's not surprising. Moby Dick is a challenging book, jumping back and forth between the excitement of its whaling story and long chapters of background on the history of whaling; it contains a wild mix of styles and literary devices—poems and songs, long soliloquies that read like Shakespearean blank verse, stage directions. These days, the book is often thought to be notoriously difficult, and abridged versions have long been popular. Brian G. Spare's The Hunt for Moby Dick (e-book) is described as a "translation" of Melville, which means that it's been greatly shortened and the prose modernized. In a lighter vein, Mike Bezemek condenses the novel into 200 tweets in #Moby-Dick (e-book).

Some authors have offered advice on how to approach the novel. Christopher Sten's Sounding the Whale (e-book) is a chapter-by-chapter study; Nathaniel Philbrick tackles the fundamental question in Why Read Moby Dick? (e-book | e-audio | print).

For a long time, very few people did read Moby Dick. It was out of print within a decade of its publishing. Melville's publisher issued new editions of most of his novels after his death in 1891, but they didn't get much notice. It wasn't until the centennial of Melville's birth, in 1919, that a Melville revival began. The 1924 publication of Melville's unfinished novella Billy Budd (e-book | e-audio | print | audio) helped drive interest. By mid-century, scholars and critics had rediscovered his work, and now considered him among the finest early American novelists.

Recent authors have certainly been inspired by Melville and by Moby Dick. Sena Jeter Naslund retells the story from the point of view of Ahab's Wife (e-book | e-audio | print); Bruce Sterling's Involution Ocean (e-book) and China Mieville's Railsea (e-book | e-audio | print) are science fictional re-imaginings. John J. Healey's Emily and Herman (e-book | print) and Mark Beauregard's The Whale (e-book | e-audio | print) feature Melville as a character, focusing on his relationships with other authors—Emily Dickinson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, respectively—during the writing of Moby Dick.

Moby Dick has been adapted into other media, too. John Huston's 1956 film stars Gregory Peck as Ahab; Ray Bradbury co-wrote the screenplay and used that experience as the basis for his novel Green Shadows, White Whale (e-book | print). William Hurt and Patrick Stewart play Ahab in two different TV miniseries adaptations.

Musical works inspired by Moby Dick include the song "Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin; metal band Mastodon's album Leviathan; the suite for wind band Of Sailors and Whales by W. Francis McBeth; and Peter Mennin's orchestral Concertato, "Moby Dick."

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November 12, 1840

Auguste Rodin was born. Rodin was a sculptor who brought to the art a new sense of realism. Before Rodin, sculptors frequently illustrated religious or mythological themes; Rodin sculpted figures with no particular thematic imagery. His first major sculpture, The Age of Bronze, was so realistic that he was accused of having cast a mold from a living model; to avoid such charges, much of his later work was either larger or smaller than life-size. Rodin's major works, including The Thinker and The Kiss, and his legacy are discussed by a group of contemporary artists in the documentary Rodin: The Sculptors' View, available for streaming at Kanopy.

November 15, 1906

Curtis LeMay was born. As a major in the Air Force during World War II, LeMay developed the controversial, but brutally effective, campaign of firebombing Japanese targets. As Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force in the 1960s, LeMay advocated for harsher military tactics during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. As a result of those disagreements with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, he was pushed into retirement in 1965. In 1968, LeMay ran for Vice President on the ticket of segregationist George Wallace; they won five states. Warren Kozak's biography is called LeMay (e-book | e-audio | print).

November 17, 1978

Rachel McAdams was born. McAdams is an actress whose breakout roles came in two very different movies, the high school comedy Mean Girls and the romantic drama The Notebook, and in the Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows. She has been among the busiest actresses of her generation, with nearly thirty films to her credit. McAdams was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the 2015 drama Spotlight, about a team of reporters investigating the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

November 14 is National Pickle Day

Pickling is a form of preservation by fermentation or immersion in vinegar. In the United States, we most often associate pickles with cucumbers, but a wide variety of foods can be pickled. Among the world's best-known pickles are Korean kimchi, German sauerkraut, and the Italian condiment giardiniera. Andrea Chesman offers 150 recipes for pickling your own fruits and vegetables in The Pickled Pantry (e-book | print).