Newest Study Guides
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.
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.
The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story is based on a non-fiction article by Richard Preston that was published in The New Yorker on October 26, 1992. Titled “Crisis in the Hot Zone,” the article chronicled an outbreak of a mutated strain of the...
The Quiet American is an anti-war novel by Graham Greene that waspublished in 1955 in the United Kingdom and in 1956 in the United States. Greene drew upon his own experiences in Indochina as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaroin the...
The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a novel by Mitch Albom that was published in 2003. It follows the life and death of a maintenance man named Eddie.
Albom grew up Jewish and, although he does not subscribe to any specific religion today, feels...
The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607) is a Jacobean play and one of the most prominent examples of the “tragedy of the blood” and “revenge tragedy” genres. Like many other plays from that same theatrical tradition, such as John Webster’s The White Devil,...
Walter Dean Myers's novel Fallen Angels was published in 1988. The novel is based on the author's own experiences as a young American soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War lasted from 1959 to 1973, but the United States had the most...
Everyday Use was first published in 1973 as part of the short story collection In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. These stories span multi-generational periods and interconnect Black women from the American South, New York City and...
Though published over 100 years ago, The Wind the Willows has survived as a classic children's novel, one which has been in print since initial publication and continues to delight children even today.
Kenneth Grahame created the characters of...
Accidental Death of an Anarchistis a form of political theater,written in responseto the death of Giuseppi (Pino) Pinelli, an anarchist who died while in police custody for questioning about a bombing in which he played no part. Some of Fo's...
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, published in the United Kingdom with the alternate spelling The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, won many international and Irish awards, including two Irish Book Awards and the Bisto Book of the Year. It topped the New...
Remains of the Day, published in 1989 is the third novel by Kazuo Ishiguro after A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World. Remains of the Day has since become a modern classic after it won not only the Man Booker Prize in 1989, but...
The poem To The Pious Memory of the Accomplish'd Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew, published in 1686, is an elegy written by John Dryden in the memory of Anne Killigrew, a British poet who lived between 1660 and 1685.
Even if Anne Killigrew is...
Those who subscribe to such beliefs will confidently assert that one of Nostradamus’ many intricately abstruse quatrains foretells the coming of the Great London Fire of 1666. As far as city-wide conflagrations go, the 1666 blaze that made its way...
The poem "The Hind and the Panther" was written and published in 1687 by Dryden, being an allegory regarding religion. During the time Dryden wrote his poem, he left the Church of England and converted to Catholicism. The poem is the longest poem...
British poet laureate John Dryden lived in a time when religious turmoil and political turmoil were intertwined to the point of confusion. The answer to the question of whether you considered yourself a Catholic or a Protestant had the power to...
In 1681, a grand jury was convened in Middlesex to consider a bill of charges filed against the Earl of Shaftesbury on the grounds of having committed high treason. The Earl of Shaftesbury had already been earlier immortalized through his infamous...
John Dryden was England's first Poet Laureate (1668) and still remains an influential poet in the British literary canon. He has written some of the most valuable work that has emerged from Restoration England to the extent that the period was...
The Tao Te Ching is a classical Chinese text. Though the author and date of composition are still not confirmed, the work was most likely written by Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu, also spelled Laozi, is the father of Taoism. He was a philosopher, a writer, and...
On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural...
Patricia C. McKissack (1944-2017) is an accomplished children's author. Prolific thanks to the support of her husband, Fredrick, she's written over 100 books for young kids. She served as a board member for the National Children's Book and...
The Go-Between is a novel written by English author, L.P Hartley in 1953. After discovering an old diary, the aging Leo Colston reflects upon the summer he spent as a child at Brandham Hall in Norfolk, the home of his wealthy school friend,...
El Buscón is a novel by Francisco de Quevedo that was first published in Spain in 1626 under the title "Historia de la vida del Buscón, llamado Don Pablos, ejemplo de vagamundos y espejo de tacaños" which literally translates to "History of the...
This text is essentially a heretic Spanish novella which was released anonymously. It falls under the picaresque genre and was published in 1554. Lazarillo de Tormes has much significance due to its founding of the picaresque which together a...
We Need to Talk About Kevin, a fictional novel written in 2003 written by Lionel Shriver, is about a teen psychopathic killer named Kevin who commits a fictional school massacre. The story is delivered from the perspective of Kevin's mother, Eva,...
The House At Pooh Corner is the second volume of stories about a bear called Winnie-The-Pooh and was written by English author A.A. Milne in 1928. Milne was a gifted and mercurial writer who studied at Cambridge University on a mathematics...