"Life on the Mississippi was released in 1883 as a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, as well as travels on the river after the war. The writing shows Twain's love for the river and how it was uniquely American. The book was the first submitted for publishing as a typewritten manuscript. This edition is heavily illustrated with more than 300 original illustrations."--Page [4]...

Offers a collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. This book includes tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.

Fifteen stories evoke the character, atmosphere, and people of Dublin at the turn of the century. In Dubliners, James Joyce takes us on an extraordinary journey with the ordinary men and women from the city of his birth. In 'Araby' a young boy struggles with everyday tasks in the face of a growing infatuation with his neighbour's sister; in 'The Boarding House' a single mother orchestrates a marriage proposal for her daughter; in 'The Dead' the ideas...

"Stephen Crane's immortal masterpiece about the nightmare of war was first published in 1895 and brought its young author immediate international fame. Set during the Civil War, it tells of the brutal disillusionment of a young recruit who had dreamed of the thrill and glory of war, only to find himself fleeing the horror of a battlefield. Shame over his cowardice drives him to seek to redeem himself by being wounded -- earning what he calls the "red...

"Moby Dick by Herman Melville is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew...

"Dostoyevsky's great novel of damnation and redemption evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur. It tells the story of Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, who wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be beyone conventional and moral laws. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a police...

Recounts the causes and history of the wars between the Greek city-states and Persia. "One of Western history’s greatest books springs to life in Tom Holland’s vibrant new translation. Herodotus of Halicarnassus—who was hailed by Cicero as “the father of history”—wrote his histories around 440 BC. It is the earliest surviving work of nonfiction and a thrilling narrative account of (among other things) the war between the Persian Empire...

Utopia (1516) is a work of political satire by Thomas More. Published in Latin while More was serving as Privy Counsellor under King Henry VIII, the text is stylized as a true account of a new civilization discovered in the New World by traveler Raphael Hythlodaeus. While there have been varying interpretations of Utopia over the centuries, it is most consistently regarded as a work of political philosophy in the tradition of Plato's Republic that...

"Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the evils of slavery to the consciences and hearts of the American people by its moving portrayal of slave experience. Harriet Beecher Stowe shows us in scenes of great dramatic power the human effects of a system in which slaves were property: the break up of families, the struggles for freedom, and the horrors of plantation labor. She brings into fiction the different voices of the emerging American nation; the Southern...