When this book was published in 1851, reading for pleasure was still a fairly new idea. There were no televisions, no movies, no mp3 players, no internet and no cell phones. If you bought a book to read for pleasure there'd better be a lot in it for your Yankee dollar. Melville knew his audience and so this book was written for the average reader of the mid-19th century. If he were publishing this book today he would have written the book for us 21st century people and wouldn't have included a 3000 word essay on "The Whiteness of The Whale" plopped down into the middle of a great and gripping story about monumental evil and passionate revenge. This book is Moby Dick for the 21st Century. All the long boring parts demanded by our ancestors have been deleted while preserving the story that still entertains after more than 150 years.