Literary History & Criticism

An intellectual detective story, this history audiobook directs probing questions at orthodox history, presenting disturbing new evidence that historians have tried - but failed - to explain....

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town....

Patrick Hastings provides comprehensive support to readers and listeners of Joyce's magnum opus by illuminating crucial details and reveling in the mischievous genius of this unparalleled novel....

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

All Souls fans have been captivated from the start by the many sources of inspiration Harkness draws on in her novels. Here, with her signature historian's touch, she offers an encyclopedic look at the series, complete with synopses, character bios, maps, recipes, and more....

In You Can’t Joke About That, Kat Timpf shows why much of the way we talk about sensitive subjects is wrong....

Jennifer Pepito was intent on loving her children well, but fear and worry pushed her around. Ultimately, she found joy in a most surprising place: the pages of classic literature she was reading aloud to her children every day. These stories helped her reclaim the wonder of childhood....

A brilliant investigation into the motivations and methods, Dumbledore dives between the lines of the Harry Potter books to create a portrait of the controversial Headmaster....

Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and, most importantly, enjoyment....

Embark on a perilous journey with Christian, the lead character, from the City of Destruction to the luminous safe haven of the Celestial City....

From the acclaimed author of American Comics and Jewish Comedy comes a highly entertaining book that examines the American obsession with horror—and what it tells us about ourselves.

One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish....

Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's Iliad by more than a millennium....

In Tending the Heart of Virtue, Vigen Guroian illuminates the power of classic tales and their impact on the moral imagination. He demonstrates how these stories teach the virtues through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil....

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works....

The tellers of Greek myths—historically men—have routinely sidelined the female characters....

Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic....

This CliffsNotes study guide on J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye supplements the original literary work....

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this outrageously provocative and profoundly moving new work on the mutual attractions—and mutual antagonisms—of Didion and her fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz.

For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us....

With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet....

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics....

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave is a study of slave making....

Batman is one of the most compelling characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased since his first appearance in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us?

Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface....

James Krasner, an expert in Victorian literature, takes you on a fascinating journey into the enduring power of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You’ll learn how these three literary masters structured their novels to offer not only scares but also complex insights into cultural debates that still matter to us today.

The glamorous extravagances and devastating lows of her time in Hollywood are revealed as never before in this fresh new biography of Dorothy Parker—from leaving New York City to work on numerous classic screenplays such as the 1937 A Star Is Born to the devastation of alcoholism, a miscarriage, and her husband’s suicide. Parker’s involvement with anti-fascist and anti-racist groups, which led to her ultimate blacklisting, and her early work in the civil rights movement that inspired her to leave her entire estate to the NAACP are also explored as never before.

In American Scary, noted cultural historian and Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes the listener to the startling origins of the horror genre in the United States, drawing a surprising through-line between the lingering influence of the European Gothic, the enslaved insurrection tales propagated by slaveholders, and the apocryphal chronicles of colonial settlers kidnapped by Native Americans, among many others.

From ancient times to the present day, The World in Books offers a wide-ranging historical education through pleasure reading—and a fantastic introduction to some of the most thought-provoking, profound, and interesting nonfiction works of all time. From Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to bell hooks’s All About Love, as well as such recent classics as Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, Davis’s guide suggests a world of nonfiction books and explains just why they’re so historically meaningful and culturally relevant today.

His fiction is known to be some of the most terrifying in the genre of supernatural horror, but Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction book may be even scarier. Drawing on philosophy, literature, neuroscience, and other fields of study, Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy.

Drawing on deep archival research and decades of scholarship, Ann Schmiesing tells the affecting story of how the Grimms’ ambitious projects gave the brothers a sense of self-preservation through the atrocities of the Napoleonic Wars and a series of personal losses.

Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her sense of self and the world, of what was possible and what was not.

Fictional stories have long held an uncanny power over hearts and minds, especially those of young people. In Dangerous Fictions, Lyta Gold traces arguments both historical and contemporary that have labeled fiction as dark, immoral, frightening, or poisonous. Within each she asks: How “dangerous” is fiction, really? And what about it provokes waves of moral panic and even censorship?

If you like to write—whether it's a pastime, a passion, or a profession—you've probably found yourself reading something brilliant and thinking, "I could never do this! I might as well give up." But if there's one thing every great author has in common, it's this: they've all written some hot garbage. Revisionaries takes you on an engrossing tour through the discarded drafts, false starts, and abandoned projects of influential writers. In the process, it dismantles some of our most deeply held—and most suffocating—ideas about what it takes to produce great creative work.

A REBELLIOUS APPROACH TO ACHIEVING PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS. In Unbeatable Latinas, Valeria Aloe takes us on a transformative journey. She begins by examining how ancestral cultural messages —such as "be humble," "just work hard," "be grateful for what you already have," and "don't create conflict"— have historically hindered our professional advancement, leaving many of us feeling undervalued, underpaid, or unsupported in our growth.