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In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens is Alice Walker's 1983 collection of 36 essays composed from 1966 and 1982. At the start of the collection, Walker coined the term "womanist", which refers to a black feminist or another feminist of color. The...

No-No Boy is a novel written by Japanese American writer John Okada and was published in 1957. The novel is focused on a Japanese American man, Ichiro Yamada, a prisoner who has recently been released and is trying to find his way in the world...

In 1762, Rousseau published The Social Contract and another major work, Emile, or On Education. Both works criticized religion, and were consequently banned in France and his native Geneva. As a result, Rousseau was forced to flee his homeland and...

Marlowe, while he was still at the University of Cambridge, translated works by the Classical Roman poets Ovid and Lucan. The scholarly reading and translation of ancient Latin (and sometimes Greek) was required of all students in all disciplines...

Dream Psychology (Psychoanalysis for Beginners) is a book written by the famed neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. The book introduced the concept of dream interpretation as the process of understanding one’s unconscious thoughts...

Written in Latin between 1 B.C.E. and 2 C.E., The Art of Love is a three-book didactic elegy on how to seduce and maintain a relationship with a woman or man. The Art of Love contains various allusions to Greek and Roman mythology, especially the...

The second work of one of the most renowned and prominent Canadian writers of the 20th and 21st centuries caused a lot of confusion among literary critics. The main reason of their perplexity was the fact that Alice Munro was a master of the short...

Child of God (1973) depicts the life of a violent young outcast in 1960s Appalachian Tennessee. McCarthy's inspiration for the novel came from history, especially a historical figure whom, in a 1992 interview, he refused to name. Despite its...

When Edith Wharton was a young girl, she was stricken with typhoid and spent time recuperating in Germany. During that period of convalescence, Wharton chanced to read what she later described as a “robber story” that left her in the grips of a...

"Watchmen" is a comic book consisting of the twelve issues published by DC Comics in the period from September 1986 to October 1987, and later reprinted in a graphic novel. The authors of the series - a writer Alan Moore, an artist Dave Gibbons,...

Clock Without Hands was published in 1961. Publication came about only as a result of the commitment by Carson McCullers to get her manuscript completed for submission. That commitment was in the form of typing most of the manuscript with just one...

The Harvest Gypsies is a seven article long discussion written for newspapers by John Steinbeck. The articles are concerned about the lives of migrant workers in California during the 1920's. Steinbeck begins the discussion talking about the...

In 1791 Susanna Rowson published a novel titled Charlotte, A Tale of Truth that would in editions be known simply as Charlotte Temple. Many later editions were printed and most of those copies immediately purchased as Charlotte Temple did...

After Virtue is a philosophical novel written by Alasdair Macintyre and was first published in 1981 by the University of Notre Dame Press. The third edition of the novel was published in 2007 and contains a new prologue.

The novel focuses on the...

Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity was published in 1802. The English clergyman William Paley wrote this work about philosophy of religion, which presents his arguments of natural theology that argue for the...

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a collaborative effort between writer James Agree and photographer Walker Evans. Ostensibly a documentary-like prose account of a visit to rural Alabama in the summer of 1936 by the writer and photographer, the work...

Robert S. McElvaine (born in 1947) is a professor at Millsaps College in Mississippi. He's enjoyed a wildly successful and lengthy career as a historian, specializing in the Great Depression. In fact he is one of hte world's leading experts upon...

In the late 80's MacKinnon was a celebrated voice in the feminist movement, particularly insightful regarding legal aspects of feminism, such as jurisprudence and ethics regarding mistreatment of women in the workplace. Part of her public...

Mr. Sammler's Planet, written by Saul Bellow, was published in 1970. It is about Artur Sammer, who is a Holocaust survivor; he is often caught with crazy people who promise endless possibilities.

Mr. Sammler is often disappointed at how the more...

A Handful of Dust is a book written by Evelyn Waugh in 193. The story mainly revolves around Tony Last, who is a gentleman that lives in his ancestral home, Hetton Abbey. He is married to his wife Brenda and has a son called John. However, his...

Jack London spent a single winter in the Canadian North during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898. When he returned, he claimed to have come upon a mythic wolf which inspired the character of Buck in The Call of the Wild. Whether or not London...

Under Western Eyes is a literary historical fiction novel by the Polish-British author Joseph Conrad. It was first published in 1911, and takes place in Russia and Switzerland. The story talks about a Russian student, Razumov, whose life changes...

Written by Arrian, a student of Epictetus', the Enchiridion is a book of practical stoic philosophy. Both men were Greeks who lived in Rome, although Epictetus, the senior of the two, lived there in slavery. He developed his philosophical ideas...

The York Mystery Plays are a collection of 48 mystery plays and pageants that cover history from a religious standpoint, starting from the creation and ending with the Last judgment. These plays are typically presented on the feast day of Corpus...