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“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period.
Born a slave circa 1818 (slaves weren't told when they were born) on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass taught himself to read and write. This book calmly but dramatically recounts...
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The classic account of moving from slavery to freedom, by the celebrated African-American educator and university founder.
Booker T. Washington believed that every man and woman deserved a chance, regardless of their skin color. This classic work of literature, originally published in 1901, relays the story of a man born into slavery who, once freed, pursued education and racial equality. This new edition of Booker T. Washington's autobiography features...
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This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy...
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Nature was a form of religion for naturalist, essayist, and early environmentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817–62). In communing with the natural world, he wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and learn what it had to teach. Toward that end Thoreau built a cabin in the spring of 1845 on the shores of Walden Pond, on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, outside Concord, Massachusetts. There he observed nature, farmed,...
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Blessed with enormous talents and the energy and ambition to go with them, Franklin was a statesman, author, inventor, printer, and scientist. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and later was involved in negotiating the peace treaty with Britain that ended the Revolutionary War. He also invented bifocals, a stove that is still manufactured, a water-harmonica, and the lightning rod. Franklin's extraordinary range of interests and accomplishments...
9) Orthodoxy
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In G.K. Chesterton's celebrated work, "Orthodoxy," readers embark on an intellectual odyssey navigating the realms between skepticism and belief. Through personal narratives and philosophical paradoxes, Chesterton artfully constructs a compelling argument for orthodox principles.
Within these pages, Chesterton skillfully dissects intricate philosophical and theological inquiries, distilling their complexities into accessible insights. His eloquence...
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Illustrated with beautiful chapter headings that match the book cover!
From the mysterious Druids and noble King Alfred to the notorious Henry VIII and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Charles Dickens traced his country's history for the benefit of young Victorians. Written with the beloved storyteller's customary panache, this series of historical vignettes reads like a fast-paced novel, rich in anecdotes and colorful stories. Dickens' unsparing,...
11) King Lear
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Featuring the images of some of the world's most famous stage and film actors, these additions to the all-new Oxford School Shakespeare introduce--and enthrall--young people to one of the greatest writers of all time. This season brings revised editions of five of the Bard's most famous plays--As You Like It, Othello, Hamlet, Love's Labour Lost and The Taming of the Shrew. Designed specifically for students unfamiliar with Shakespeare's rich literary...
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Treasury of 23 works by American poet renowned for the lyric beauty of her early works. In addition to the title poem, this collection includes "Interim," "Sorrow," "Ashes of Life," "Three Songs of Shattering," "The Dream," "When the Year Grows Old," and others, including 6 sonnets. Alphabetical lists of titles and first lines.
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Shakespeare's comedy of mistaken romance, in which a shipwrecked woman disguises herself as a man in order to help woo a lover for a Duke, but with unexpected results. This edition includes a selection from Shakespeare's original source, dramatic criticism from past and present, and a comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions of the play.
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"Claiming he had discovered the "royal road to the unconscious, " Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams at the turn of the twentieth century, and thus laid the foundation for his innovative technique of psychoanalysis. Largely ignored at first, the book would eventually be considered his most important work, one that revolutionized the way human beings view themselves. Spurred on by the death of his father, Freud began analyzing his own dreams,...
16) Selected poems
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In his 1918 autobiographical essay, "A Negro Poet Writes," Claude McKay (1889–1948), reveals much about the wellspring of his poetry.
"I am a black man, born in Jamaica, B.W.I., and have been living in America for the last years. It was the first time I had ever come face to face with such manifest, implacable hate of my race, and my feelings were indescribable … Looking about me with bigger and clearer eyes I saw that this cruelty
17) The inferno
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"Award-winning poet Mary Jo Bang has translated the Inferno at a moment when popular culture is so prevalent that it has even taken Dante, author of the fourteenth-century epic poem The Divine Comedy, and turned him into an action-adventure video game hero. Dante wrote his poem in the vernacular, rather than in literary Latin. Bang has similarly created an idiomatically rich contemporary version that is accessible, musical, and audacious. She?s matched...
19) The prince
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The world-renowned philosopher's classic treatise reveals the techniques and strategies for gaining and keeping political control. "How we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation. Therefore, it is necessary to learn how not to be good, " wrote Machiavelli.