This history examines the influences of geography and environment on the development of civilization and seeks to find large patterns that might explain why, in the modern period, some groups seem to have significantly greater material wealth than others. The author is an evolutionary biologist and his scientific approach to human history draws ...
In 1959, a missionary named Nathan Price transports his wife and four daughters to a remote village in the Belgian Congo to convert the natives. The family is met with hostility from the locals, particularly a vengeful witch doctor. They also face bands of desperate rebels, dangerous wildlife, and the inevitable petty inconveniences a hyper ...
In this stylistically simple, first-person tale of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." Through Meursault, Camus portrays a man who rejects the beliefs and life styles imposed on him by society. The events that lead to his ...
When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote THE GREAT GATSBY in the early 1920s, the American Dream was already on the skids. Originally based on the idea that the pursuit of happiness involves not only material success but moral and spiritual growth, the dream had by Fitzgerald's time become increasingly focused on money and pleasure--a phenomenon the high ...
In this now-classic tale--a terrifying variation on the traditional boys' adventure story--the brutal behavior of a group of English schoolboys left stranded on a deserted island after an atomic war is an allegory for the defects of society.
J. D. Salinger's famous and enduring chronicle of Holden Caulfield's journey from innocence to experience is the quintessential coming-of-age novel--though it's an unusual one, in which the hero tries to cling to the simplicity of childhood, achieving a kind of maturity almost in spite of himself. As the novel begins, Holden runs away from his ...
This is part of a series called "Bloom's ReViews", which are college-level study guides prepared under the aegis of Harold Bloom, distinguished Yale professor and author of "The Western Canon". Each guide includes an introductory essay by Bloom as well as extracts from renowned scholars on key topics in the work. Good for independent study and ...
Things do indeed fall apart in the mid-20th-century world of West Africa when the British colonize the country, disrupting the ancient ways of life that have provided meaning and structure for the inhabitants of a rural Ibo village. The hero of the story is Okonwo, a revered community leader and the character Achebe frequently uses as a kind of ...
The spirit of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon describes her murder, her surprise at her new home in heaven, and her witness to her family's grief, efforts to find the killer, and attempts to come to terms with what has happened.
George Orwell's celebrated and always timely 1948 vision of a world subsumed in tyranny and war describes the process of events by which Winston Smith, a London clerk at the Ministry of Truth, comes to understand the true nature and aims of the government he works for, and portrays his doomed attempt to create a private life for himself and his ...
John Steinbeck lived and worked with a group of migrant workers in California, from whom he drew the material for his great Dust Bowl saga of a wandering Okie family, the Joads. This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel awakened the American reading public to the plight of migrant workers and made Steinbeck famous worldwide. One of the most popular novels ...
A satirical novel depicting a scientific and industrialized utopia in which Ford and Freud are worshipped, eugenics policies have eliminated class conflicts (while strengthening the division of the classes), and personal unhappiness is assuaged through drugs and pornography.
In language of great simplicity and power, Hemingway tells the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck--he hasn't caught a fish in 84 days--who goes out in his small skiff one more time. This time he hooks a huge marlin. During his relentless ordeal, a long and agonizing battle with the marlin far out in the Gulf Stream, the old man ...
The aphorisms that make up the philosophy of war and strategy by Sun Tzu have, several centuries later, become a must-read for young professionals in business. Though the text can be applied to the ruthless world of commerce, this translation by Thomas Cleary contextualizes the teachings in the Taoist tradition, enabling the work to transcend the ...
Written when the author was still in high school, this is the story of Ponyboy, a teenage orphan who lives with his two older brothers. Members of the lower class known as the "Greasers," Ponyboy and his friends are at constant war with the "Socs," who represent the middle and upper classes. When Ponboy's best friend, Johnny, accidentally kills a ...
Joseph Heller's manic, bleak, blackly humorous, and brilliant novel has become a classic of American literature, and "Catch-22" has entered the language as a term describing a no-win situation. Set during the last months of World War II, the novel tells the story of an Air Force bombardier, the hapless Yossarian, who is convinced--quite rightly, ...
At a New England boarding school during World War II, a group of boys discover the depths of human nature among themselves, and the evil that even the most innocent is capable of.
When June's mother dies, she is invited to join a long-standing club of Chinese women who urge her not only to take her mother's place at the mah-jongg table, but also to carry the news of her mother's death to her step-sisters in China. Through the stories of the women and their daughters, the values of different generations are articulated. June ...
Ayn Rand's bestseller tells the story of a staunchly individualist architect (based on Frank Lloyd Wright) who combats the collectivist (i.e., mediocre) impulses of his fellow Americans. The book is both a compulsively readable, steamy novel and an articulation of Rand's views.
Pope spent his formative years as a poet translating Homer, beginning with "The Iliad", his translation of which Samuel Johnson called "the greatest version of poetry the world has ever seen". This edition makes available for the first time in paperback Pope's notes in their entirety, enabling us to listen in as one poetic genius illuminates the ...
Published in 1962, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST can be seen as a battle between the conventions of mainstream society and the anarchy of the counterculture. As a satirical critique of repressive authority figures, it pointedly spoke to the concerns of the day. Found guilty of statutory rape, Randall Patrick McMurphy agrees to be committed to a ...
Hemingway's second full-length novel, published in 1929, calls on his own experiences during World War I, when he worked for the Red Cross in Italy, was wounded after only six weeks on duty, and recuperated in a hospital in Milan, where he had a romance with a nurse. The blend of fact and imagination in A FAREWELL TO ARMS, however, is artful; ...
His first book since Truman, from one of America's most distinguished and popular biographers. Destined for the same kind of sweeping success as his Pulitzer Prize-winning Truman, John Adams is a powerful, deeply moving biography that reads like an epic historical novel. Breathing fresh life into American history, it takes as its subject the ...
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