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.
Born in 1854, Oscar Wilde was a prolific writer whose famous work includes novels like The Picture of Dorian Gray (originally published in 1890) and a play called The Importance of Being Earnest (which premiered in 1895). However, Wilde was also a...
Quicksands was published in 1884 and immediately translated into multiple languages including English. It found an eager audience on both sides of the Atlantic. The United States, having just survived the Civil War and Reconstruction, was in the...
Crazy Brave is a memoir written by the Native American poet Joy Harjo. The book spans over 176 pages and was published in July 2012 by W. W. Norton Company, before being republished a year later by the same publisher. In 2014, it was made into an...
Traditionally, candidates for the Office of the President of the United States write a book telling the public a little bit about themselves and their history (most are technically memoirs after all). Primarily, though, these books are meant to...
Traditionally, candidates for the Office of the President of the United States write a book telling the public a little bit about themselves and their history (most are technically memoirs after all). Primarily, though, these books are meant to...
This Fight Is Our Fight is a 2017 book by American Democratic politician Elizabeth Warren which delves into the ongoing assault against the American middle class. The book itself serves not only as a rebuttal against Trump’s election but also as a...
Book Seven of the Tales of the City series is important because it reintroduced Armistead Maupin's iconic series to an entirely new generation of readers. Published eighteen years after Book Six, it San Francisco of the early twenty first century...
Armistead Maupin wrote the nine novels within the Tales of the City series over a thirty-six years. The first four books were serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle before they were published, but the remaining five were published as novels...
James Thurber's 1939 short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," has been adapted for movie audiences twice. In 1947, Danny Kaye played the eponymous role in a version that stayed very loyal to Thurber's story. This 2013 version, starring Ben...
Movies about the Gulf War are usually centered around long drawn out gunfire battles, losses taken by American troops, and nail-biting strategic battles in an effort to quell a dangerous enemy. Three Kings, directed by David O. Russell, presents a...
If the Academy Awards ever added a category for Most Tears Shed In A Movie, Love Story would definitely be a contender, if not the winner outright. Considered to be one of the most romantic movies of all time, the film is at its heart a tragedy...
The Black Death: A Personal History is a book written by author and scholar John Hatcher. It was first published June 2008 by Da Capo Press in the United States, as well as being published as The Black Death: An Intimate History by Orion in the UK...
There is a certain air of mystery around the authorship of this epic poem; scholars are torn between attributing its writing to Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Mallory. It is one of many versions of the popular fifteenth century loathly lady story, in...
Deepa Mehta's Earth (released in September 1999), is set in 1947 during the partition of India. It is a romance film and tells the story of a young girl with Polio named Lenny. Lenny is from a wealthy Parsi family who wants to remain neutral in...
The Slave Ship: A Human History is a book written by American author, scholar, professor and historian Marcus Rediker. It was first published in October 2007 by Penguin Books in the United States, and December 2007 by Viking books in the United...
So Long a Letter is a semi-autobiographical novel written in letter format by Mariama Bâ. It is a staple of classic women's literature classes, and also won the Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa in 1980.
The novel centers around the theme of...
Dirty Pretty Things is a 2002 film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight about an illegal Nigerian immigrant and doctor, Okwe, who gets embroiled in a London underground organ market being run out of the hotel that employs him....
I Capture the Castle is author Dodie Smith's first novel. Published shortly after World War II in 1948 (the book was written while Smith and her husband were in California during the war), I Capture the Castle follows a young 17-year-old girl...
Scottish novelist Ali Smith received a multitude of plaudits for her 2014 novel How to Be Both, with critical acclaim and a slew of awards and nominations, including the prestigious Man Booker Prize, for which she was nominated in 2014, and the...
Three Women is a nonfictional biographical text written by the American writer and journalist Lisa Taddeo. It was published the 9th of July 2019 by Avid Reader Press and Simon Schuster. The story spans over 320 pages, featuring three different...
Sanditon is unique among Jane Austen's novels in that it was never actually finished; it is therefore up to the reader to decide what might ultimately happen to the characters they have come to know within it, and to try to create the novel's...
Room was published in 2010 by Emma Donoghue. It was shortlisted for many awards, including the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Awards in 2010; it was also The New York Times Notable Best Book of the Year, an ALA Notable Book, the Irish...
Me Before You was written by Jojo Moyes in 2012 and was published by Pamela Dorman Books/Viking Publishing. It has sold over 8 million copies and was adapted into a film in 2016. Jojo Moyes, author of the novel, wrote the screenplay for the film...
Sappho was a Grecian singer who performed more than 2,500 years ago. None of her music survives. Of the nine volumes of her poetry that once sat in the library of Alexandria, only two full poems, and a few hundred fragments, remain. Along with her...