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Author
Summary
Ever since its publication in 1948, George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian regime where Big Brother controls its citizens like 'a boot stamping on a human face' has become a touchstone for human freedom, and one of the most widely-read books in the world. In this new annotated edition Orwell's biographer D. J. Taylor elucidates the full meaning of this timeless satire, explaining contemporary references in the novel, placing it in the...
5) Elmer Gantry
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A vulgar and licentious college football captain becomes a messenger of God as a suave evangelist preacher.
6) The heap
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Chronicles the rise and fall of a massive high-rise housing complex, and the lives it affected before;and after;its demise. --Publisher
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The Devil's Dictionary (1906) is a work of satire by Ambrose Bierce. Although he is commonly remembered for his chilling short stories on the experiences of Civil War soldiers, Bierce was recognized in his day as a leading journalist and humorist who spent decades ruffling feathers and drawing laughter with his witty opinion columns, poems, and definitions. Toward the end of his career, he decided to compile these satirical definitions into a book,...
9) Arrowsmith
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Arrowsmith tells the story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith of Elk Mills, Winnemac (the same fictional state in which several of Lewis's other novels are set), as he makes his way from a small town in the Midwest to the upper echelons of the scientific community at a prestigious foundation in New York City. Along the way he begins medical school. He becomes engaged to one woman, cheats on her with another woman, becomes engaged...
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Discworld volume 34
Summary
"Start with Douglas Adams's comic science fiction (A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and J.R.R. Tolkien's alternative worlds, mix in James Ellroy's gritty realism and Jonathan Swift's unflinching satire and, if you're lucky, you'll get something like Terry Pratchett's Thud!" —Wall Street Journal
City Watch Commander Sam Vimes must solve the murder of a prominent dwarf or watch as Discworld is plunged into
...11) Erewhon
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Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902) was a Victorian novelist who wrote in many genres. The Way of All Flesh and Erewhon are his most famous novels. Besides fiction Butler also wrote on evolution, Christian orthodoxy, Italian art, literary history and translated the Illiad and The Odyssey. Erewhon is a utopian satire of Victorian England published in 1872. The title is the name of a fictional country and it is also the word nowhere spelled backwards. The beginning...
12) Babbitt
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Babbitt turns the spotlight on middle America and strips bare the hypocrisy of business practice, social mores, politics, and religious institutions. In his introduction and notes Gordon Hutner explores the novel's historical and literary contexts, and highlights its rich cultural and social references. --from publisher description
13) Moo
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes “an uproariously funny and at the same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community in the Midwest" (The New York Times).
In this darkly satirical send-up of academia and the Midwest, we are introduced to Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the study of agriculture. Amid cow pastures and...
In this darkly satirical send-up of academia and the Midwest, we are introduced to Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the study of agriculture. Amid cow pastures and...
14) Numero zero
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"A novel about the murky world of media politics, conspiracy, and murder."--
15) Animal farm
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Since its publication fifty years ago, Animal Farm has become one of the most controversial books ever written. It has been translated into seventy languages and sold millions of copies throughout the world. This edition is being published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of its original U.S. publication. It features 100 full-color and halftone illustrations by world-renowned artist Ralph Steadman. As vital and relevant as it was fifty years...
17) Tono-Bungay
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Presented as a miraculous cure-all, Tono-Bungay is in fact nothing other than a pleasant-tasting liquid with no positive effects. Nonetheless, when the young George Ponderevo is employed by his uncle Edward to help market this ineffective medicine, he finds his life overwhelmed by its sudden success. Soon the worthless substance is turned into a formidable fortune as society becomes convinced of the merits of Tono-Bungay through a combination of skilled...
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Presents Jonathan Swift's satire in which a shipwrecked Englishman encounters bizarre populations in unheard-of lands, including an enlightened race of horses that makes him see his fellow humans in a different light; and includes explanatory notes and a note on the text, which is based on the 1726 edition.
19) Stay and fight
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"A wildly original, piercingly timely addition to the story of the American family Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriend's ideas for living off the land. Too soon, with winter coming, he calls it quits. Helped by Rudy--her government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered boss--and a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring. Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child,...
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It began as a dinner-party contest: when Mark Twain and his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner criticized the deplorable quality of their wives' reading material, the two writers were challenged to come up with something more intriguing. Thus, for the only time in his career, Twain collaborated on a novel with another author. The title of their rollicking 1873 tale became synonymous with the rampant post—Civil War corruption of Washington, D.C., where...
