"Over one hundred and fifty years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French nobleman and an astute political scientist, came to the United States to evaluate the meaning and actual functioning of democracy. Democracy in America is the classic treatise on the American way of life that he wrote as a result of his visit." "Tocqueville discusses the advantages and dangers of the majority rule -- which he thought could be as tyrannical as the rule of...

A brilliant psychological portrait of a troubled young man's quest for self-awareness, this coming-of-age novel achieved instant critical and popular acclaim upon its 1919 publication. A landmark in the history of twentieth-century literature, it reflects Hermann Hesse's preoccupation with the duality of human nature and the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. Emil Sinclair recounts episodes from his childhood that led to a change in his attitudes...

Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in wartorn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage.

"Returning to Turkey from exile in the West, Ka is driven by curiosity to investigate a surprising wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head scarves in school. But the epicenter of the suicides, the eastern border city of Kars, is also home to the radiant and newly divorced Ipek, a friend of Ka's youth, whom he has never forgotten and whose spirited younger sister is a leader of the rebellious schoolgirls. As a fierce snowstorm...

"Though Monk is witness to the terrible bombing of an afternoon pleasure boat on the river that leaves 200 people dead, much to his dismay the case is taken from his hands and given over to the commissioner of police. An Egyptian man is quickly caught, tried, and sentenced to death--and then just as swiftly murdered in prison. When evidence surfaces that proves the dead man innocent, the case is handed back to Monk, who must now rely on his own memory...

"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...

In a time of drought and economic depression in 1934, Ella Barron runs her boardinghouse in Texas while caring for her son, Solly, and responds to the calm influence of one of her boarders, David Rainwater, while facing the tension and uncertainty around her.

Growing up in 1950s Detroit, Jo and Bethie Kaufman's roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women's lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who...

This novel, originally written in 1916, published in 1921, explores the lives of the Brangwen sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and their developing love affairs with Rupert Birkin, an intellectual, and Gerald Crich, an industrialist. The despair of one sister's relationship contrasts with the happiness of the other's as the four clash in thought, passion, and belief, in their search for a life that is truly complete. The novel is the sequel to The Rainbow....

"Just two years after completing Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky produced a second novel with a very different man at its center. In The Idiot, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power, and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. Extortion and scandal escalate...