In early nineteenth-century Yorkshire, the passionate attachment between a headstrong young girl and a foundling boy brought up by her father causes disaster for them and many others, even in the next generation. Includes explanatory notes throughout the text, an introduction discussing the author and the background of the story, and a study guide.
In Conrad's haunting tale, Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the enigmatic Kurtz. Travelling to the heart of the African continent, he discovers how Kurtz has gained his position of power and influence over the local people. Marlow's struggle to fathom his experience involves him in a radica...more
A guide to reading "Jane Eyre" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.
Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written. The bible of the environmental movement, WALDEN vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his under...more
Out of the stories heard in her childhood in Los Angeles's Chinatown and years of research, See has constructed this sweeping chronicle of her Chinese-American family, a work that takes in stories of racism and romance, entrepreneurial genius and domestic heartache, secret marriages and sibling rivalries, in a powerful history of two cultures meeti...more
Lucid. Magisterial. Subtle. Engaging. This remarkable book has pretty much everything going for it. "If ever there was a time when Asia could be ignored, that time is not the present." Thus begins the opening chapter of this important contribution to our understanding of the bewildering diversity that has existed and continues to exist in the c...more
This brilliant collection, edited by the award-winning and perennially provocative Salman Rushdie, boasts a “magnificent array” (Library Journal) of voices both new and recognized.With Rushdie at the helm, the 2008 edition “reflects the variety of substance and style and the consistent quality that readers have come to expect” (Publishers W...more
Dazzling in its range, exhilarating in its immediacy and grace, this collection gathers together, from every region of the country and from the past forty years, the poems that continue to shape our imaginations. From Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery and Adrienne Rich, to Robert Haas and Louise Gluck, this anthology takes the full m...more
Reason, Facts, and statistics... Dickens’ scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy, Hard Times features schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind, one of his most richly dimensional, memorable characters. Filled with the details and wonders of small-town life, it is also a daring novel of ideas—and ultima...more