Showing titles in Literary History & Criticism

This is the story of James Ellroy, one of the most provocative and singular figures in American literature. The so-called “Demon Dog of Crime Fiction,” Ellroy enjoys a celebrity status and notoriety that few authors can match. However, traumas from the past have shadowed his literary success. Informed by interviews with friends, family, peers, and literary and Hollywood collaborators, as well as extensive conversations with Ellroy himself, Love Me Fierce in Danger pulls back the curtain on an enigmatic figure who has courted acclaim and controversy with equal zealotry.

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.  

Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is a science fiction classic. In Ender’s World almost two dozen writers offer new perspectives on the 1985 novel, along with insights gleaned from other Ender stories that fit within the Ender’s Game chronology. In addition, military strategists Colonel Tom Ruby and Captain John Schmitt offer insight into the human-Formic war.

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.

Like every other superhero, Wonder Woman has a secret identity. Unlike every other superhero, she has also has a secret history. Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has uncovered an astonishing trove of documents, including the never-before-seen private papers of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator.

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the power to keep us safe, to challenge us, and perhaps most importantly, to make us more fully human. Shannon Reed, a longtime teacher, lifelong reader, and New Yorker contributor, gets it. With one simple goal in mind, she makes the case that we should read for pleasure above all else.

Generations of children have fallen in love with the pioneer saga of the Ingalls family, of Pa and Ma, Laura and her sisters, and their loyal dog. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books have taught millions of Americans about frontier life, giving inspiration to many and in the process becoming icons of our national identity. Yet few realize that this best-selling series wandered far from the actual history of the Ingalls family and from what Laura herself understood to be central truths about pioneer life.

From sonnets to fairytales to experimental French literature, Once Upon a Prime takes us on an unforgettable journey through the books we thought we knew, revealing new layers of beauty and wonder. Professor Hart shows how maths and literature are complementary parts of the same quest, to understand human life and our place in the universe.

Rainer Maria Rilke was a giant of twentieth-century writing who remains a rare visionary voice for our own time. This audio edition of Dr. Stephanie Dowrick's acclaimed book allows you literally to "hear" how and why Rilke's extraordinary words continue to captivate readers, not least through his profound understanding of the depth and beauty of human existence.

A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.

Christianity is in crisis in the West. The Inkling friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, analysed why. He developed an account of our spiritual predicament that is radical and illuminating. Barfield realized that the human experience of life shifts fundamentally over periods of cultural time. Our perception of nature, the cosmos, and the divine changes dramatically across history.

Join world-renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs for lively conversations with the authors of scintillating, inspiring and remarkably important books about history, social justice, and the challenges of building a decent world. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org. The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, an initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Produced by Karena Joslin. Audio editing by Matt Rocker, theme song composed by Matt Rocker, performed by Dave Eggar. A kontentreal production.

Savannah Cade’s dreams are coming true. The Claire Donovan, editor-in-chief of the most successful romance publishing company in the country, has requested to see the manuscript Savannah’s been secretly writing. The only problem: she’s an editor for a different company, and their philosophy is only highbrow works are worth printing and romance should be reserved for the lowest level of Dante’s inferno. But when Savannah drops her manuscript during a staff meeting and nearly exposes herself to the whole company, she has no choice but to hide the manuscript in a hidden room.

Oe's most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times "close to a perfect novel". In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child?

Welcome to Immerse: Beginnings! An Immerse Bible Reading (and listening!) Experience Featuring the full New Living Translation (NLT) Bible, Beginnings is the second installment of the six volumes of Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience program. Beginnings takes the reader on a new and unique journey through the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. From Genesis through Deuteronomy, Beginnings provides the reader with enjoyable and impactful readings. The end result is a Bible developed for the purpose of being read and understood, not referred to. Beginnings is a new way to interact ...

In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom — who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic — gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on 48 essential works spanning the Western canon.

With this book, you’re bound to make those into a reality, where inside you will discover an easy guide to understanding dyslexia—cut through the jargon and get to know what dyslexia really is and how it uniquely impacts boys.

The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history - Marvel Comics - and the outsized personalities who made Marvel, including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby.

I will try to post everyday with a new chapter and hopefully 10/11 will be out when I finish 1-9/10

A compilation of 80 short stories by the author of "Anne of Green Gables" that were not previously published in a book or in one of Project Gutenberg's short stories collections for this author. The subjects range from children's stories, to romance, humor, and ghost stories. These short stories were published in various magazines from the years 1896 to 1924. Some of these stories were adapted by L.M. Montgomery into chapters of her later novels. The story "Una of the Garden" was transformed into the novel "Kilmeny of the Orchard".