"In America, censorship surges in periods of demographic and political change. Its primary purpose is to silence challenges to an established elite or norm. Today, censorship is part of a larger assault on such American institutions as schools, public libraries, and universities, the better to establish more control over the people--while also pilfering their wallets. In this concise look at censorship, author James LaRue explores the topic through...

Cormac McCarthy told an interviewer for the New York Times Magazine that “books are made out of books,” but he has been famously unwilling to discuss how his own writing draws on the works of other writers. Yet his novels and plays masterfully appropriate and allude to an extensive range of literary works, demonstrating that McCarthy is well aware of literary tradition, respectful of the canon, and deliberately situating himself in a

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Likely written around 1607 or 1608 and attributed at least in part to Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" is an adventure-filled play that follows the extended sailing journeys of a young prince. Pericles, a young prince from Phoenicia, is forced to flee Antioch when he correctly guesses a riddle that reveals the incestuous activity of King Antiochus. Unable to stay at home in Tyre because of Antiochus' vengeance, he sails away and ends up shipwrecked...

"A meditation instructor and former English teacher shows how the great classics of Western literature illustrate the essential concepts of Eastern philosophy. The discussion includes works by authors such as John Keats, William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Frederick Douglass, and many others."--

"Delightful." -Mary Norris, The New Yorker A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world's most polarizing punctuation mark The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care? In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark,...

Throughout his career, whether as a man of letters, professor, soldier, journalist, novelist, or world traveler, Russell Kirk found himself in the thick of the intellectual controversies of his age. In “The Politics of Prudence”, his twenty-ninth book (and the last to be published during his lifetime), Kirk endeavors to defend a truly conservative "prudential politics," as opposed to the "ideological politics" now often advanced by self-identified...

The Waves by an English writer, who is considered as one of the most important modernist 20th Century authors and also a pioneer in the use of the stream of consciousness as a narrative device, Virginia Woolf. It is an experimental novel which is considered a key text of the Modernist literary movement. Interspersed with lyrical descriptions of waves breaking against the shoreline, the novel traces the intertwining lives of six friends from childhood...

Young adult novels are a great place to find characters who are a lot like you. Maybe they are new to school, are dealing with being bullied, or feel like they just don't fit in. By reading realistic fiction books, you can read about someone who is going through similar experiences. Highlighting the elements found in realistic fiction novels, this book examines the different types of internal struggles found in YA fiction. Developed by Timothy Rasinski...

Many readers know Lewis as an author of fiction and fantasy literature, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Others know him for his books in apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. But few know him for his scholarly work as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. What shaped the mind of this great thinker? Jason Baxter argues that Lewis was deeply formed not only by the words of Scripture...

In his preface to this 1917 guide to gathering, handling, and writing news stories, the author notes that the purpose of his work is to give aspiring reporters practical guidance for their duties and performance as journalists. Spencer's book is interesting from an historical point of view, but it also provides close analyses of all types of stories-analysis that could be applicable to any good news reporting today.