Literary History & Criticism

An intellectual detective story, this history audiobook directs probing questions at orthodox history, presenting disturbing new evidence that historians have tried - but failed - to explain....

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town....

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

Patrick Hastings provides comprehensive support to readers and listeners of Joyce's magnum opus by illuminating crucial details and reveling in the mischievous genius of this unparalleled novel....

In You Can’t Joke About That, Kat Timpf shows why much of the way we talk about sensitive subjects is wrong....

In Tending the Heart of Virtue, Vigen Guroian illuminates the power of classic tales and their impact on the moral imagination. He demonstrates how these stories teach the virtues through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil....

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave is a study of slave making....

A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour....

Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture....

Jennifer Pepito was intent on loving her children well, but fear and worry pushed her around. Ultimately, she found joy in a most surprising place: the pages of classic literature she was reading aloud to her children every day. These stories helped her reclaim the wonder of childhood....

A brilliant investigation into the motivations and methods, Dumbledore dives between the lines of the Harry Potter books to create a portrait of the controversial Headmaster....

One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish....

Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface....

For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us....

Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and, most importantly, enjoyment....

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works....

With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet....

This CliffsNotes study guide on J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye supplements the original literary work....

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics....

Legendary writing teacher and author of The Anatomy of Story John Truby provides a guide to understanding the major genres of the story world.

From the moment Claire Randall stepped through a standing stone circle and was thrown back in time to the year 1743, fans have been hungry to know everything about this world ....

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition....

From pop culture podcaster and a voice of a generation, Kate Kennedy, a celebration of the millennial zeitgeist: One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned....

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant....

Batman is one of the most compelling characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased since his first appearance in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us?

James Krasner, an expert in Victorian literature, takes you on a fascinating journey into the enduring power of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You’ll learn how these three literary masters structured their novels to offer not only scares but also complex insights into cultural debates that still matter to us today.

Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren’t just a small subset of the films, video games, TV shows, and books that people consume. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. That’s why businesses—movie studios, production companies, video game studios, and publishing houses—buy and sell them. Legendary writing teacher John Truby provides a guide to understanding the major genres of the story world.

In American Scary, noted cultural historian and Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes the listener to the startling origins of the horror genre in the United States, drawing a surprising through-line between the lingering influence of the European Gothic, the enslaved insurrection tales propagated by slaveholders, and the apocryphal chronicles of colonial settlers kidnapped by Native Americans, among many others.

This telling of the story of Jane's life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the places and spaces that mattered to her. It wasn't all country houses and ballrooms, but a life that was often a painful struggle. Jane famously lived a 'life without incident', but with new research and insights Lucy Worsley reveals a passionate woman who fought for her freedom. A woman who far from being a lonely spinster in fact had at least five marriage prospects, but who in the end refused to settle for anything less than Mr Darcy.

Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University nine days before October 7th, 2023. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of human history. Profound and moving, Hammad writes from within the moment, shedding light on the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

The glamorous extravagances and devastating lows of her time in Hollywood are revealed as never before in this fresh new biography of Dorothy Parker—from leaving New York City to work on numerous classic screenplays such as the 1937 A Star Is Born to the devastation of alcoholism, a miscarriage, and her husband’s suicide. Parker’s involvement with anti-fascist and anti-racist groups, which led to her ultimate blacklisting, and her early work in the civil rights movement that inspired her to leave her entire estate to the NAACP are also explored as never before.

Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her sense of self and the world, of what was possible and what was not.

Forty essays on history, art, and literature to lift your mind and spirit. Guy Davenport serves as the listener's guide through history and literature, providing links between music and sculpture, modernist poets and classic philosophers, the past and present-pointing out the values and avenues of thought that have shaped our ideas and our thinking.

A unique blend of memoir, research, and cultural criticism, this is a searing and incisive examination into how we tell stories about mental illness, how that affects how we treat it, and how those with mental illness can begin to take control of their own stories through fantasy and fiction.

Nesta obra, Paulo Honório conta sua história de vida, desde a conquista da fazenda São Bernardo até a amargura da velhice. Nesta versão adaptada para áudio, os diálogos diretos foram incorporados à narração, visando a facilitar a compreensão para o ouvinte. Foram mantidos, porém, o conteúdo do texto e os trechos narrados em primeira pessoa tal qual o autor os escreveu.