Newest Study Guides

Marcus Cicero wrote De Officiis (also known as On Obligations) in less than four weeks, in the Fall of 44 BC. It is a long that details Cicero's idea of the best way to live. The treatise is split into three separate books. Book One deals with...

The Leopard is a book written by the Italian author and social critic Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The book, which is a chronicle of Italian history, was published in 1958 by Feltrinelli after many query-rejections. It spans over 330 pages...

Based on the true story of a female prisoner at the Qanatir Prison in Egypt, Woman at Point Zero is one of Nawal El Saadawi’s most celebrated works. After Egyptian publishers rejected the book because of its radical content, Saadawi had it...

John G. Avildsen's classic Rocky (1976) has inspired countless sequels and prequels and is responsible for one of the most famous sequences in cinematic history (the montage of Rocky training in Philadelphia). The film follows the eponymous Rocky...

As a key figure in the modernization of Bengali literature, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in every literary form that existed at the time: poetry, drama, prose, memoir, philosophy, musical lyrics. But he didn't write in every form all of the time, and...

The Government Inspector is one of the most famous Russian plays, renowned for its satirical portrayal of government officials and laced with apocalyptic, absurd overtones. Vladimir Nabokov praised the play, stating “The play begins with a...

Tracy Letts' black comedy August: Osage County was written in 2007 and premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago before transferring to Broadway and running for 648 performances. In 2008 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was widely...

Plutarch's Parallel Lives (first printed in Rome in 1470) is a work of tremendous quality and equally great historical importance. Although it is a very complex book, it can be easily described as a series of biographies of famous people (like...

The Hairy Ape tells the story of the fall of Yank, a proud and powerful stoker working aboard a steamship. Though respected by his fellow workers, a chance encounter with a millionaire's daughter who disdains him as an "ape" leads to a vain quest...

Usually, love is part of everyday life, a matter of routine devotion and simple joys. But occasionally, love can hit like a storm, ripping you away from the ordinary passage of time, and from yourself. Sappho's "Fragment 31" speaks of this...

If Beale Street Could Talk is James Baldwin's sixth novel, published on June 17, 1974. It was published the year that Baldwin turned 50. The novel received ambivalent reviews following its publication, but in recent years its reputation has grown....

Adapted from the James Baldwin novel of the same name, If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) is writer-director Barry Jenkins follow-up to the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight (2016). Set against the backdrop of early 1970's Harlem, New York, ...

Hamlet is director-writer-actor Kenneth Branagh's adaption of William Shakespeare's famed play of the same name. Branagh is perhaps best-known for his Shakespeare adaptions, so his involvement in the adaption of Hamlet is no surprise. Branagh's...

Born in November 1921, author Yoshiko Uchida certainly had an interesting life. During her senior year at U.C. Berkeley, Uchida was informed that she and her family -- as well as all of the Japanese Americans in the United States -- would be...

Chinua Achebe’s novel Arrow of God was published in 1964. This is Achebe’s third novel after his books No Longer At Ease and Things Fall Apart. Together these three books are often referred to as the African Trilogy. This book was published as...

John Dryden’s “A Song for St. Cecilia's Day" is a long-form poem published in 1687, in celebration of a religious holiday commemorating St. Cecilia, a Catholic martyr and patron saint of music and musicians. Dryden, in this poem, celebrates music...

Everyman is a retrospective reflective novel about “everyman”. It is written by Philip Roth and was published in 2006 by Hougton Mifflin at 182 pages. There is an audiobook read by George Guidall which was published shortly after the written...

Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (released in 1994) is an undoubtedly interesting film. It was now-famous director Quentin Tarantino that came up with the story for the film, which revolves around two people who suffered through bad and...

Although written as a novel, The Moon Is Down was originally intended to be a play, and was written in such a way that it was easily adapted for the stage. Written in 1942, the novel is set in an unspecified small country in Northern Europe that...

Veronica Roth's novel Divergent was adapted for the big screen in 2014. It is a dystopian science fiction film on one hand but is also an action thriller, too. It is the first in the Divergent Series and is sent in a post-apocalyptic Chicago,...

Based on Dracula by Bram Stoker and the film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) follows Count Dracula as he moves from Transylvania to Wismar. On his journey, Dracula spreads the Black Plague across...

In all of the books you have read about the devil, you have probably never imagined him to be gainfully employed as a professor, engaged in debate with a monk called Michael or spending his down time philosophizing about rationalism, religion and...

Family is the story of slavery as told through the eyes and experiences of one family i particular. Clora is a slave; the story tells how her blood runs from its African roots all the way around the world and mixing with other races, classes and...

An Unquiet Mind is a memoir written in 2009 by Dr. Kay Jamison, in which she recounts her lifelong struggle with manic-depressive illness. The tone of An Unquiet Mind varies between one of informal recollection of life events and one of a clinical...