Literary History & Criticism

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

From pop culture podcaster and a voice of a generation, Kate Kennedy, a celebration of the millennial zeitgeist: One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned....

In this brilliant conclusion to his best-selling Mythos trilogy, legendary author and actor Stephen Fry retells the tale of the Trojan War....

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town....

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read....

The tellers of Greek myths—historically men—have routinely sidelined the female characters....

For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us....

Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic....

Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture....

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics....

For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative....

Volume 2 of the Nobel Prize-winner’s towering masterpiece: the story of Solzhenitsyn's entrance into the Soviet prison camps, where he would remain for nearly a decade. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum....

From breakout stand-up comedian Iliza Shlesinger comes a subversively funny collection of essays and observations on a confident woman's approach to friendship, singlehood, and relationships....

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works....

One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish....

Maya Angelou, one of the best-loved authors of our time, shares the wisdom of a remarkable life in this best-selling spiritual classic....

The Master and Margarita is one of the most famous and best-selling Russian novels of the 20th century, despite its surreal environment....

Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin....

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to 12 Books to Read Before You Die, Volume 1 and learn about these classic books: Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, and more....

At long last, millions of Dune fans can now hear the unpublished chapters and scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah....

Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time....

When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry....

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition....

Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art....

Batman is one of the most compelling characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased since his first appearance in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us?

Sharing her more than 15 years of compelling research—including analysis of Sylvia Plath’s unpublished calendars, notebooks, scrapbooks, book annotations, and underlinings, as well as published memoirs, biographies, letters, journals, and interviews with Plath and her husband, friends, and family—Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer reveals Sylvia Plath’s enduring interest and active practice in mysticism and the occult from childhood until her tragic death in 1963.

Innumerable stories, from the Homeric epics to the New Testament, and from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, explore the realization or failure of second chances—outcomes that depend on accident, acts of will, or fate. Such stories let us repeatedly rehearse the experience of loss and recovery: to know the joy that comes with a renewal of love and pleasure and to face the pain that comes with realizing that some damage can never be undone. Through a series of illuminating readings, the authors show how Shakespeare was the supreme virtuoso of the second chance and Freud was its supreme interpreter.

What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear-a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena?

As any fan of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic rereader of books. In 2008, then-new science fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her rereading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor. Now this volume presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series.

In "The Ultimate Dad's Playbook," author and proud Ultimate Dad, A.T. Green, invites fathers into the enchanting world of raising children with courage and confidence. This indispensable guide combines three guides into one––The Girl Dad's Playbook, The Boy Dad's Playbook, and The Super Dad's Playbook––each with 101 tips and tricks to empower every father to become the Ultimate Dad. Discover the secrets of building an unbreakable bond with your child through the art of communication and shared experiences. From navigating the delicate terrain of the teen years to celebrating their ...

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and modern thinkers challenged the old orthodoxies, offering thrilling new perspectives that suddenly felt radical—and too dangerous for women.

Sweet, supportive, dependable, selfless. Long before she had children of her own, journalist Carrie Mullins knew how mothers should behave. But how? Where did these expectations come from—and, more importantly, are they serving the mothers whose lives they shape? Carrie's suspicion, later crystallized while raising two small children, was that our culture’s idealization of motherhood was not only painfully limiting but harmful, leaving women to cope with impossible standards—standards rarely created by mothers themselves.

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) was a brilliant master of Japanese haiku. This instructional book offers six lessons on how to write haiku based on examples from Issa and from twenty-first century poets who are following his creative path.

In 'Disturbing Remains,' Derek, Kaili's husband, finds himself thrust into a chilling investigation when only a torso is discovered by the police. Racing against time as more gruesome body parts surface, Derek and his team delve deeper into a twisted maze of murders begging to be solved. Meanwhile, Kaili seeks solace during a sabbatical but is drawn into an unexpected adventure. Assisting her friend Dr. Doris Wolf's discovery of the Canadian Ice Maiden, Kaili utilizes her remarkable ability to communicate with mummies through a spirit box. Together, they venture to unlock the secrets of the...

Part lyric essay, part prose poetry, Where Things Touch grapples with the manifold meanings and possibilities of beauty. Drawing on her experiences as a physician-in-training, Orang considers clinical encounters and how they relate to the concept and very idea of beauty. Such considerations lead her to questions about intimacy, queerness, home, memory, love, and other aspects of human existence. Throughout, beauty is ultimately imagined as something inextricably tied to care: the care of lovers, of patients, of art and literature, and the various non-human worlds that surround us.

On her first book tour at the age of 26, Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn't possibly answer at that moment. But she has been thinking about it ever since. As time has passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labor, law, prejudice and reconciliation, to name a few, are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians.

Leland Ryken provides a clear pathway to understanding the "Great Works" through this engaging series of short guidebooks. Beginning with "why the classics matter" and "the nature and function of literature," listeners will find a helpful path to understanding and analyzing influential works in the Western canon. This volume leads listeners through John Bunyan’s classic Christian allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, offering insights into the nature of faith, the reality of temptation, and the glory of salvation.

An excellent companion to the classic work The Secret Garden, this guide would be the perfect literature enrichment for homeschool, co-op, book club, or just for fans of this work and genre! Rachel Dodge, author and narrator, eloquently points out the imagery, historic context, and themes in this beautiful piece and ties them into Biblical motifs, analyzing each chapter and character through a Christian lens

Welcome to The Book of Japanese Folklore: a fascinating journey through Japan’s folklore through profiles of the legendary creatures and beings who continue to live on in pop culture today. From the sly kitsune to the orgrish oni and mischievous shape-shifting tanuki, learn all about the origins of these fantastical and mythical creatures. With information on their cultural significance, and how it’s been spun into today’s popular culture, this tome teaches you about the stories and histories of the beings that inspired characters in your favorite movies, animes, manga, and games.

Peace in the US Republic of Letters, 1840-1900 explores the early peace movement as it captured the imagination of leading writers. The book charts the rise of the peace cause from its sources in the works of William Penn and John Woolman, through the founding of the first peace societies in 1815 and the mid-century peace congresses, to the postbellum movement's consequential emphasis on arbitration.