Literary Analysis

Unique among books that examine the bible as literature, this brilliantly compact introduction offers an intriguing double-edged look at this universal text - a religiously informed literary analysis. The book first explores the major sections of the New Testament - the gospels, Paul's letters, and Revelation - as individual literary documents. Keefer shows how, in such familiar stories as the parable of the Good Samaritan, a literary analysis can uncover an unexpected complexity to what seems a simple, straightforward tale.

How to Do Discourse Analysis provides a comprehensive toolkit for conducting discourse analysis, offering twenty-six practical tools to examine how language is used to construct meaning, enact identities, and shape social realities. Written by renowned linguist James Paul Gee, it introduces key concepts like situated meanings, social languages, and discourses, showing how language both reflects and creates social contexts.

In this updated edition of the popular textbook An Introduction to the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann and Tod Linafelt introduce the listener to the broad theological scope of the Old Testament, treating some of the most important issues and methods in contemporary biblical interpretation. This clearly written textbook focuses on the literature of the Old Testament as it grew out of religious, political, and ideological contexts over many centuries in Israel's history. 

Philosopher Judith Butler's 1990 work, Gender Trouble, shook the foundations of feminist theory and changed the conversation about gender. While many thinkers already accepted that "gender" was a category constructed by society rather than defined by one's genitalia, Butler went further and argued that gender is performative - it exists only in the acts that express it. Society determines that wearing makeup is "feminine" - but some men wear makeup. Are they "women"?

Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics created a "scientific revolution" in international relations, starting two major debates. In the 1980s it defined the controversy between the neorealists, who believed that competition between states was inevitable, and the neoliberals, who believed that states could cooperate with each other. As the debate wound down with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, a second more fundamental debate began.

What is the good life? Proverbs: Audio Lectures, taught by Christopher Ansberry, answers this question across different collections and through different poetic forms, each of which are designed to (trans)form one's character. This project of character formation assumes that wisdom and virtue...

Western thinking about the Middle and Far East has been distorted by stereotype and inaccuracy. This argument lies at the center of Palestinian-American literary theorist Edward Said's groundbreaking book, Orientalism. Originally published in 1978, it cemented Said's reputation as the father of postcolonial studies.

Morgenthau's classic text, published in 1948, not only introduced the concept of political realism but also established it as the dominant approach in international relations and the guiding philosophy of US foreign policy during the Cold War.

El pavoroso espectro de la desolación y el triunfo de la solidaridad narradas de manera fantástica en esta joya de la literatura. Albert Camus (1913-1960) narra los avatares del doctor Rieux y de toda una ciudad, Orán, contra una peste de dimensiones sobrecogedoras.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction - and the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature - novelist, orator, and outspoken public intellectual Toni Morrison is best known for her novels. In Playing in the Dark, however, she enters the realm of literary criticism. Morrison, an African American, draws attention to the often-overlooked significance of race in literature, demonstrating "the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it". Reading the racial language between the lines of classic American fiction, Morrison shows that literature is never raceless.

Edward Luce's in-depth analysis of the decline of democracy, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, explores the myriad factors affecting the shift away from a political system many readers will have taken for granted in their lifetimes. This Sumoreads summary and analysis offers supplementary material to The Retreat of Western Liberalism to help you distill the key takeaways and review the book's content.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary, analysis and review of the book and not the original book. Timothy Snyder's provocative new political read, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, offers practical advice based on lessons learned throughout history in how citizens can help fight tyranny and stop democratic governments from becoming authoritarian dictatorships.