Edith Wharton`s dark view of society, the somber economics of marriage, and the powerlessness of the unwedded woman at the turn of the twentieth century emerge dramatically in the tragic novel The House of Mirth

Born a slave, Frederick Douglass educated himself, escaped, and became on of the greatest social leaders in American History. Although usually identified with the monumental Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Douglass produced two additional autobiograthies, the second of which he called My Bondage and my Freedom

In the Poetics Aristotle focuses mainly on drama, especially tragedy, and introduces ideas that are still debated today - more than two thousand years later

Set in the 1740s just as the French and Indian wars have begun, the novel opens as Natty Bumppo - known as Deerslayer - and his friend Hurry Harry travel to Tom Hutter`s house in upstate New York. Hurry plans to marry Tom`s beautiful daughter Judith, while Deerslayer has come to help his close friend Chingachgook save his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, from the Huron Indians. When war breaks out, and Hurry and Tom are captured by Indians, Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them

The remarkable courage and deep convictim of Martin Luther King Jr. live on this classic prothetic text, a veritable primer in the principles and practice of nonviolence

Considered the most important poem of the twentieth century, T.S. Eliot`s The Waste Land is an oblique and fascinating view of the hopelessness and confusion of purpose in modern Western civilization

Greed, treachery, mesmerism, and murder are just some of the bricks Hawthorne uses to build The House of the Seven Gables. Generations before the present story begins, wealthy Colonel Pyncheon covets Matthew Maule’s land. When Maule is hanged for witchcraft, he puts a curse on the Colonel—and all his descendants. Now the menacing Judge Pyncheon continues the family tradition of hiding cruelty under a dazzling smile, while his scowling niece, Hepzibah, and half-mad nephew, Clifford, are reduced to poverty by his machinations. But the younger generation, embodied in their distant cousin Phoebe, becomes a ray of hope penetrating the dark house

At a much lower price than comparable anthologies, the Fifth Edition provides 18 extraordinary plays, with a strong representation of historical periods and minority and women playwrights. The Introduction focuses on the study of drama as both a literary genre and a performing art; also provided are expanded introductions to the plays, an updated select bibliography, and a new filmography