Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, Toni Morrison is among our most distinguished contemporary novelists. Morrison describes herself as a "black woman novelist," and all her novels deal with African American characters and communities. Exploring the entire cycle of human life in a spiritual context, her novels are also universal in their depiction of families, especially mothers and their children. This study analyzes in turn each of...

Thomas C. Foster, acclaimed author of the phenomenal bestseller How to Read Literature Like a Professor, returns with a hugely entertaining appreciation of twenty-five works of literature that have greatly influenced the American identity. In a delightfully informative, often wry manner, Twenty-Five Books that Shaped America looks closely at important literary classics that are true national treasures. From The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,...

"This is a book about the whirlwind of creativity, the passionate drive to make art born of individuated experience that is both unique and unduplicatable... This singular new book of profiles represents not so much a summation as a culmination of Peter Guralnick's groundbreaking work over the years, covering not only the vast sweep of the American musical landscape but its profound personal impact on the author as well"--Adapted from jacket flap....

"What exactly is goodness? Where is it found in the literary imagination? Toni Morrison, one of American letters' greatest voices, pondered these perplexing questions in her celebrated Ingersoll Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 2012 and published now for the first time in book form. Perhaps because it is overshadowed by the more easily defined evil, goodness often escapes our attention. Recalling many literary examples, from Ahab to Coetzee's...

SparkNotes 101: Literature will provide a helping hand, whether you're studying for a test, brushing up on a few novels, writing a paper, or even trudging through four years of English classes.

It has often been said that love, both sacred and profane, is the only true subject of the lyric poem. Nothing better justifies this claim than the splendid poems in this volume, which range from the writings of ancient China to those of modern-day America and represent, at its most piercing, a universal experience of the human soul. Includes poems by John Donne, Christina Rossetti, W.H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Graves, E E. Cummings,...

Aspiring singer, songwriter Jed King is struggling to catch a break and escape the long shadow of his famous father when he reluctantly agrees to a gig at a local vineyard harvest festival. Jed meets the vineyard owner's daughter, Rose, and a romance quickly blooms. Soon after their wedding, Jed writes Rose a song, which becomes a breakout hit. Suddenly thrust into a life of stardom and a world of temptation, his life and marriage begin to fall apart....