Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Thunderball is the ninth James Bond adventure from Ian Fleming, published in 1961 just as Bond mania was about to break out on a global scale. The tale of James Bond’s to stop the theft of nuclear weapons began life as a screenplay co-written by...
Ian Flemming published his tenth James Bond novel in 1963. First published by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom on April 1, the novel was then released in America in August of 1963 by the New American Library. Fleming also signed 250 copies to...
From Russia with Love was the fifth novel by author Ian Fleming to feature his distinctively British secret agent James Bond. It would be the one that catapulted Bond from regional hero to global phenomenon because one day a reporter from Life...
The State and Revolution was written by Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist revolutionary. At the time of the pamphlet's completion in September 1917, the future of the Russian Revolution was uncertain after the February Revolution. During this...
Max Weber is a German writer known for his philosophical and political writings. Born in Prussia, Max Weber grew up to be one of the most influential philosophers of his era, his writings inspiring other great thinkers such as Karl Marx.
Weber was...
Published in 1963 by the German author Hannah Arendt, On Revolution is a book that glorifies the events of the American Revolution, and says that the French Revolution was meaningless compared to it. Arendt claims that the leaders of the American...
Written in the 5th century CE, City of God, or The City of God Against the Pagans, is one of the best known and most influential of Saint Augustine’s works. The book was completed less than two decades after the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in...
Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings is a collection of writings and reflections by the medieval philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas. Saint Thomas Aquinas was an Italian friar, priest, and Christian philosopher. He was alive during the 13th century and...
Philip K. Dick was an American novelist born on December 16, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. Dick’s parents divorced when he was five, so he was raised by his mother in Washington D.C. Although he did not receive stellar grades, his elementary and...
Ragtime is a novel written by Edgar Lawrence Doctorow that was published in 1975. Ragtime is a historical fiction novel that is set in New York City. Doctorow is a New York City native, and after going to school at Kenyon College and Columbia...
My Mortal Enemy is a novel written by Willa Cather in 1926. The novel revolves around Myra and her husband Oswald who return to their home in Illinois, USA to visit their relatives. Oswald soon receives silver-buttons for his shirt from an old...
Born in Christmas Eve of 1818 in the South-wark section of London, Eliza Cook found early success as a poet. She published her first collection while still a teenager in 1835. The verse featured in Lays of a Wild Harp found a receptive audience...
Parallax is defined as the illusion that a given object in the distance appears to change position viewed from a different position. You can demonstrate this effect by focusing on an object off the distance as you are reading this and looking at...
Stanley Kubrick. Sidney Lumet. George Roy Hill. According to film critic Daniel O’Brien, these Hollywood luminaries were among a dirty dozen or so who all turned down the opportunity to direct a film adaptation of Richard Hooker’s comic novel...
Annie Hall: The most perfectly imperfect love story ever
Woody Allen, a legendary director, screenwriter and comedian is famous for his bittersweet slapstick comedies and unique Jewish humor. Allen's heartfelt tribute to his muse and actress Diane...
The highly dubious “auteur theory” that distinguishes the director as the “author” of a film in the same way that a writer is the author of a novel simply does not hold when applied to Network. The film that reveals a shocking ability to produce...
The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca is a Moroccan folklore written by Tahir Shah and was released on October 26 2006 by Bantam Dell publishers.
The story follows the life of Tahir Shah, an Anglo-Afhan immigrant, who travels with his family to...
The Upanishads (also commonly known as the Vedanta) are a collection of ancient Sanskrit texts of religious and philosophical subjects. There are many concepts that are central to Hinduism and related to Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. They are...
Having finished “The Legend of Saint Julien," Flaubert, as he said, was too excited to take on much work. In March 1876, he began his second novel “A Simple Heart”, completed in September of the same year.
He had already somewhat developed the...
Lucky Jim is a novel written by Kingsley Amins in 1954. The novel mainly revolves around the story of Jim Dixon, who is a history lecturer at a university in England. He is a middle-class man who is grammar school-educated who has just started out...
When talking about A Man for All Seasons,one has to consider two aspects: the period in which the play was written and the historical backround on which it is based.
Robert Bolt was a playwright born in Lancashire on the 15th of August 1924. He...
During the first two years of her new marriage, Carson McCullers worked on a manuscript titled The Mute which she then showed to her writing teacher, Sylvia Bates. Bates was impressed enough to strongly urge McCullers to apply for a Houghton...
Written in 1893, The Odd Women explores the role of British women in the latter half of the nineteenth-century, especially that of the redundant woman. What do women do when marraige isn't an option? What is natural for women? If woman's practical...
Hunger is a novel written by Knut Hamsun in 1890. The book mainly revolves around an unnamed vagrant who is very intellectual leanings and wanders around the streets of Norway's capital, Oslo, in pursuit of nourishment. The unnamed character also...
