Literary History & Criticism

First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy....

A brilliant investigation into the motivations and methods, Dumbledore dives between the lines of the Harry Potter books to create a portrait of the controversial Headmaster....

C. S. Lewis offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry of one of the most consequential periods in world history, providing deep insight into some of the greatest writers of the age....

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....

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

Available for the first time, the letters of one of America's most beloved authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder - a treasure trove that offers new and unexpected understanding of her life....

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

Edward L. Ayers examines the formative period when voices of dissent and innovation defied power and created visions of America still resonant today....

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....

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....

At long last, millions of Dune fans can now hear the unpublished chapters and scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah....

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....

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....

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....

Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and, most importantly, enjoyment....

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....

Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface....

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

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....

From the moment Claire Randall stepped through a standing stone circle and was thrown back in time to the year 1743, fans have been hungry to know everything about this world ....

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....

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave is a study of slave making....

In How to Read the Constitution - and Why, legal expert and educator Kimberly Wehle spells out in clear, simple, and common-sense terms what is in the Constitution and most importantly, what it means....

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant....

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures....

Ever found yourself fantasizing about life as a bestselling author? Not just the fame and fortune, but the kind of transformative impact that changes lives. Imagine using your book to fully book your business, filling your schedule with clients who respect, admire, and pay you what you're worth! Think about it: your words, a constant stream of dream clients, and the sweet smell of ink and opportunity. Welcome to She's Booked: Using Authorship to Book Out Your Business. This isn't just another book—it's a lifeline, a catalyst, and a hearty 'Amen!' rolled into one. I know what it's like to ...

This book helps listeners develop practices that will result in deep, formative, and faithful reading so they can contribute to the flourishing of their communities and cultivate their own spiritual and intellectual depth. The authors present reading as a remedy for three prevalent cultural vices—distraction, hostility, and consumerism—that impact the possibility of formative reading. Deep Reading provides resources for engaging in formative and culturally subversive reading practices that teach listeners how to resist vices, love virtue, and desire the good.

Andy Griffith (1926-2012) is one of North Carolina's most beloved exports, capturing America's heart as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Evan Dalton Smith was born in the North Carolina Piedmont over four decades after Andy, just an hour south of Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy. Both were small-town boys who grew up in similar places, where the counties were dry and the churches plentiful. But for both, there was darkness, crushed hopes, and tragedy, hidden just below the surface.

In a magisterial work, Jaan Puhvel unravels the prehistoric Indo-European origins of the traditions of India and Iran, Greece and Rome, of the Celts, Germans, Balts, and Slavs. Utilizing the methodologies of historical linguistics and archaeology, he reconstructs a shared religious, mythological, and cultural heritage. Separate chapters on individual traditions as well as on recurrent themes—god and warrior, king and virgin, fire and water—give life to Comparative Mythology as both a general introduction and a detailed reference.

Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.

Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson's brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes and critical essays, as well as several conversations with friends and idols, bring to life Nelson's passion for dialogue and dissent. Arranged chronologically, Like Love shows the writing, thinking, feeling, reading, looking and conversing that occupied Nelson while writing iconic books such as Bluets and The Argonauts.

My Top Ten Favorite Books of All Time is and essay by James J. Caterino, the author of My Encounter with the Partridge Family, sort of, What If, Girl Pop, Make Me Cry Please, The Girl Out of Time, Romance Stories, To Meghan, True Stories, Time Travel Stories, and much more.

What if the American experiment is twofold, encompassing both democracy and tyranny? That is the question at the core of this book, which traces some of ways that Americans across the nineteenth century understood the perversions tyranny introduced into both their polity and society.

**Exploring Adoption Narratives Unveiling the Stories That Shape Our Understanding** Delve into the fascinating world of adoption through the lens of literature, film, television, and media. "Exploring Adoption Narratives" is an illuminating eBook that dissects the many ways adoption has been portrayed across different mediums and how these narratives have evolved over time. Start your journey with an introduction to the historical context of adoption in media and the purpose and scope of the book. With detailed methodologies for analyzing adoption narratives, this book sets the stage for a...

Dark Trade by Harper Stanwick, Sr.is a gripping mystery thriller set in Victorian London. This historical fiction novel plunges readers into a world of intrigue, dark secrets, and psychological suspense. Follow Larry Myrick, a city alderman and potential future Mayor of London, as he navigates a labyrinth of deceit and murder in the fog-laden streets of London. Experience the chilling atmosphere of Victorian society, from opulent mansions to shadowy alleyways. Uncover a web of secrets involving high-ranking officials, mysterious women, and enigmatic characters that will keep you guessing ...

The Story of Philosophy is a captivating intellectual journey that explores the evolution of human thought and the enduring legacy of great thinkers throughout history. Written by the renowned author Will Durant, this monumental work provides listeners with a comprehensive overview of the world's philosophical traditions, from ancient Greece to the modern era.

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?

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.

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.

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.