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One of MSNBC's most prominent talking heads, Maddow has never been one for holding back when it comes to expressing her opinions, or being gentle upon those who do not share them. In her 2019 book Blowout she explores her obsession with the issue...

In many ways, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man revolutionized the film industry and put superhero movies on the map. The film tells the origin story of Spider-Man, chronicling Peter Parker's life and the various hardships he experiences. Primarily, though...

"I want something to do." These are the first words in the narrative of Tribulation Periwinkle, the young protagonist of Hospital Sketches, and the autobiographic figure representing Louisa May Alcott. The book is, in fact, a compilation of four...

Over the course of his over 40 year career, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a number of books, many of which have become revered American classics. Sirens of Titan was the second of his many novels. A comedic science fiction story, most of Sirens of Titan...

“Easter Wings” is perhaps 17th-century English poet George Herbert’s most beloved poem. It is famous for its shape: the words on the page are arranged like a pair of wings. Besides “Easter Wings,” Herbert is also well-known for a second...

The Emperor Jones is a play written by Eugene O'Neill and first produced in New York City in 1920. It tells the story of a black American man named Brutus Jones who, after killing another black man in a dice game, escapes jail and goes to a small...

If you are one of millions of children who over the years have been told to go outside and get some fresh air, you will be surprised to discover that this was actually an instruction with a sound scientific basis. Richard Louv penned this book in...

There is relatively little known about Middle English poet Thomas Hoccleve, whose career spanned most of the reign of King Henry IV.For much of this reign he held the office of Privy Seal, which was an honor, but also a cause for complaint for...

For a writer who has made such a profound impact upon the world literature scene as Saida Herzi, there is notoriously little information readily available for fans, critics, students, scholars or just some randomly typing letters into a search...

Published in 1962, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Shirley Jackson’s final novel before her death in 1965. Told from the perspective of 18-year-old Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, it focuses on the lives of Merricat, her older sister...

"The Nightingale" by Sir Philip Sidney is a poem comprised of two twelve-line stanzas at a time when Italian meter and form were first entering the English literary tradition. Published in a 1598 folio of Sidney’s poems, Certaine Sonets, the poem...

Thriller and horror novelist Joe Schreiber's foray into young adult fiction produced an entertaining handbook for young con artists everywhere. The book's protagonist, Will Shea, has been raised to be a con artist, and his entire life has hurtled...

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1999) constitutes author Bill Bryson's first of many travel books. It details Bryson's nearly fourteen-thousand mile car journey, which started in his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa and took Bryson...

When the postal service discovered child pornography from the Netherlands in a package addressed to Arnold Friedman, of Great Neck, New York, investigators were dispatched to his home where they discovered a large collection of magazines similar...

The book "Women and Alcohol in Highland Maya Town" is written by Christine Eber and published in 1995. It is a feminist analysis of gender culture, tradition, religious change, and drinking habits in highland Chiapas. The writer researched the...

Nappily Ever After was distributed by Netflix who also produced it alongside Marc Platt Productions and Badabing Pictures. Adam Brooks and Cee Marcellus wrote the screenplay which was based upon Trisha R. Thomas' book "Nappily Ever After." The...

Sarah Baartman was a Khoekhoe woman, descending from the indigenous nomadic people of southwestern Africa. She was known as the Hottentot Venus, and in the early part of the nineteenth century was put on display throughout Europe, much like other...

Orphan of Asia, completed in 1945, is an autobiographical novel by Chuo-liu Wu, dramatizing the internal, external, and personal struggles of the protagonist Hu Taiming. This central character is “born in Japanese-occupied Taiwan” and grows up...

Based on the novel of same name by Winston Groom, Robert Zemeckis' 1994 film Forrest Gump tells the story of a mentally and physically challenged man in 1960s Alabama, and his various foibles and incredible luck. It chronicles Forrest's early...

“The Listeners” is the most famous and frequently anthologized poem by Walter de la Mare, an author otherwise known mostly for his horror fiction and works for children. It first appeared in print in 1912 in de la Mare’s third collection of...

Brooklyn is one of Colm Tóibín's most popular and best-known works. Published in 2009, it achieved both critical and commercial success. It was translated into 22 languages, and sold more than a quarter of a million copies. It was longlisted for...

John Ford’s The Searchers is considered to be one of the greatest American westerns of all time. Released in 1956, it is based on a novel by Alan Le May and depicts a version of the Texas-Indian wars. A commercial as well as critical success, the...

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a coming-of-age, young-adult novel written by Benjamin Alire Saenz and published in 2012. The story takes us back to 1987, where we meet two young Mexican-American boys residing in El...

Trumpet is a novel written by Jackie Kay in 1998. It was the first novel she wrote, and it won the 1998 Guardian Fiction Prize.

Trumpet begins with the death of Joss Moody, a highly successful jazz musician, and documents the different reactions...