Newest Study Guides

"Zlateh the Goat" is a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The story was included in his collection of short stories, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1966). "Zlateh the Goat," like most of Singer's stories, was written in Yiddish and...

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, published in 2010 as David Mitchell's fifth novel, is a long, dense historical fiction book that marks a significant departure from his previous genre of writing. Set primarily on the island of Dejima, a...

Annie Dillard is an American writer who writes of growing up in Pittsburgh, PA in her memoir An American Childhood. She won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction at the age of 29 for her seminal work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. That particular book proved...

George Herbert, born in 1593, was a busy man: he served two terms as a member of Parliament, held the post of public orator at Trinity College, was ordained as a deacon, and as canon of the Lincoln Cathedral, he worked to become a pious servant of...

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was released in 2008 to critical and financial acclaim, grossing over a billion dollars at the box office. Written by Christopher and his brother Jonathan, the film tells the story of the corruption of Gotham...

When Kobe Bryant tragically died in January of 2020, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play quickly went out of stock and became a #1 bestseller on Amazon. The Mamba Mentality was initially released in October 2018, though, and even then the book sold...

Few books are as innovative or interesting as David Almond's Kit's Wilderness (published in 2000). A children's novel, the book is set in a made-up northeast English town and tells the story of young Kit Watson and his family who move back to the...

Usually, nothing good can come of a family heirloom grandfather clock striking thirteen; Tom Long, though, finds that there is a whole new world that opens up for him when he hears the thirteenth chime. Philippa Pearce's classic children's fantasy...

First published in 1859, George Eliot's short novella The Lifted Veil tells the story of a man who is overcome by haunting visions of the future. An unhappy man, he is overwhelmed by those visions and a tremendous amount of thoughts in his head,...

The Lorax is a 1971 children’s fiction book written by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel). Though it was first published in 1971 by Random House, several newer versions have been edited and re-published, including the most sold 1999 edition. The original...

Bryan Stevenson's memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption covers the author's career as a public interest lawyer in the Deep South, focusing primarily on Walter McMillian's wrongful conviction and sentencing to death row. Though...

Born in 1927, Yusuf Idris was an Egyptian writer and playwright. Originally trained to be a doctor, Idris started writing a regular newspaper column while working at a hospital in Cairo. In 1954, his first anthology of short stories was published,...

Judith Clare Thompson, born in 1954, is a Canadian playwright. Initially training and working as an actress, Thompson published her first play in 1980 and afterwards focused solely on her writing career. She has been the recipient of numerous...

Written by acclaimed playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell, Machinal (released in 1928) was inspired by the real-life case of a woman named Ruth Snyder, who brutally murdered - along with her lover Henry Gray - her husband. Machinal, though,...

William Wordsworth’s “The Thorn” was written in 1789. Wordsworth's inspiration for the setting of the poem, a mountain, came from his own experience of seeing a hawthorn tree on Quantock Hill in Somersetshire. The poem was included in the first...

In 1645 Milton published “L’Allegro” in a collection of poetry alongside another poem entitled “Il Penseroso.” The poems take opposite sides in a debate about whether it is better to live a carefree life or a contemplative life. The speaker in “L’...

Dryden himself acknowledged that his 1667 play All for Love is an imitation of William Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, which was written in the early 1600s). It is a heroic drama that follows many of the same story beats of Shakespeare's ...

The Three Musketeers was first published in 1844. It was serialized (published in monthly installments) in the newspaper Le Siecle between March and July 1844. Later that same year, the novel was published as a complete eight-volume set. Dumas had...

“The Collar” appears in George Herbert’s collection of poetry The Temple, published in 1633. The poem likely draws on Biblical sources including the parable of the prodigal son (Luke xv 11-32). It is unique among the poems in The Temple for its...

There is almost a disconnect between Roxane Gay and her body, hence the use of parentheses in the title. The memoir is the story of her body but it seems to have taken on an identity all of its own, because as far as Gay is concerned, there is...

Dirty Dancing is a romantic dance film produced by Linda Gottlieb and directed by Emile Ardolino. The film was made in 1987 and was distributed by Vestron Pictures. Leading cast members, Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze star as main protagonists...

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is Ottessa Moshfegh’s much-anticipated 2018 follow-up to her debut novel, Eileen. Eileen received rave reviews, won the author a coveted Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

My...

Had the oppressive Soviet regime not cracked down on author Victor Shklovsky and his Russian formalists. the world may have seen more books by the ingenious author. Still, the world was able to read Theory of Prose (originally published in 1929),...

Hamlet is often regarded as the Renaissance narrative which has most aggressively been put to film. Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 entry marks yet another entry into that series of films.

Based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name,...