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College Board's 100 Books for College-Bound Readers
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Things Fall Apart
by Chinua AchebeTHINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria.
The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.
The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries.
These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.
THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 9-10 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
A Death in the Family
by James Agee and Steve EarlePublished in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative depictions of loss and grief ever written.
As Jay Follet hurries back to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he is killed in a car accident-a tragedy that destroys not only a life, but also the domestic happiness and contentment of a young family.
A novel of great courage, lyric force, and powerful emotion, A Death in the Family is a masterpiece of American literature.
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inferno
by Clive James and Dante AlighieriDante's immortal vision of Hell shines "as it never did before in English verse" (Edward Mendelson) in Clive James's new translation of Inferno.
The most captivating part of perhaps the greatest epic poem ever written, Dante's Inferno still holds the power to thrill and inspire.
The medieval equivalent of a thriller, Inferno follows Dante and his faithful guide, Virgil, as they traverse the complex geography of Hell, confronting its many threats, macabre punishments, and historical figures, before reaching the deep chamber where Satan himself resides.
Now, in this new translation, Clive James communicates not just the transcendent poetry of Dante's language but also the excitement and terror of his journey through the underworld.
Instead of Dante's original terza rima, a form which in English tends to show the strain of composition, James employs fluently linked quatrains, thereby conveying the seamless flow of Dante's poetry and the headlong momentum of the action.
As James writes in his introduction, Dante's great poem "can still astonish us, whether we believe in the supernatural or not. At the very least it will make us believe in poetry."
Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Elizabeth AmmonsSelling more than 300,000 copies the first year it was published, Stowe's powerful abolitionist novel fueled the fire of the human rights debate in 1852.
Denouncing the institution of slavery in dramatic terms, the incendiary novel quickly draws the reader into the world of slaves and their masters.
Stowe's characters are powerfully and humanly realized in Uncle Tom, a majestic and heroic slave whose faith and dignity are never corrupted; Eliza and her husband, George, who elude slave catchers and eventually flee a country that condones slavery; Simon Legree, a brutal plantation owner; Little Eva, who suffers emotionally and physically from the suffering of slaves; and fun-loving Topsy, Eva's slave playmate.
Critics, scholars, and students are today revisiting this monumental work with a new objectivity, focusing on Stowe's compelling portrayal of women and the novel's theological underpinnings.
This Norton Critical Edition includes:
The 1852 first book edition, accompanied by Elizabeth Ammons’s preface, note on the text, and explanatory annotations.
Twenty-two illustrations.
A rich selection of historical documents on slavery and abolitionism.
Seventeen critical reviews spanning more than 160 years.
A Chronology, A Brief Time Line of Slavery in America, and an updated Selected Bibliography.
Beowulf
by AnonymousThe story of one man's triumph over a legendary monster, Beowulf marks the beginning of Anglo-Saxon literature as we know it today.
This Enriched Classic includes:
• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
• Detailed explanatory notes
• Critical analysis and modern perspectives on the work
• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
•
A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary.
The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson
Candide
by Voltaire and Francois-Marie ArouetCaustic and hilarious, Candide has ranked as one of the world's great satires since its first publication in 1759.
It concerns the adventures of the youthful Candide, disciple of Dr. Pangloss, who was himself a disciple of Leibniz.
In the course of his travels and adventures in Europe and South America, Candide saw and suffered such misfortune that it was difficult for him to believe this was "the best of all possible worlds" as Dr. Pangloss had assured him.
Indeed, it seemed to be quite the opposite. In brilliantly skewering such naïveté, Voltaire mercilessly exposes and satirizes romance, science, philosophy, religion, and government -- the ideas and forces that permeate and control the lives of men.
After many trials and travails, Candide is reunited with Cunegonde, his sweetheart.
He then buys a little farm in Turkey where he and Cunegonde, Dr. Pangloss and others all retire. In the end, Candide decides that the best thing in the world is to cultivate one's own garden.
A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane AustenElizabeth Bennet, one of Austen's most enduring heroines, has four sisters, a mother desperate to find them all good marriages, and not much family wealth.
When Elizabeth meets the handsome and rich Mr. Darcy, it is not love at first sight.
But there's more to Darcy than just pride as Elizabeth grows to realize.
A charming and timeless romance and comedy of manners and morality, Pride and Prejudice is eminently rereadable.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin"Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else."
Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic.
With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935.
Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.
Tom Jones
by Henry Fielding and Martin C. Battestin and Fredson BowersTom, a foundling, is discovered one evening by the benevolent Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget and brought up as a son in their household; when his sexual escapades and general misbehavior lead them to banish him, he sets out in search of both his fortune and his true identity.
Amorous, high-spirited, and filled with what Fielding called "the glorious lust of doing good," but with a tendency toward dissolution, Tom Jones is one of the first characters in English fiction whose human virtues and vices are realistically depicted.
This edition is set from the text of the Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding.
The Adventures of Augie March
by Saul BellowOriginally published in 1953, Saul Bellow's modern picaresque tale grandly illustrates twentieth-century man's restless pursuit of an elusive meaning.
Augie March, a young man growing up in Chicago during the Great Depression, doesn't understand success on other people's terms.
Fleeing to Mexico in search of something to fill his restless soul and soothe his hunger for adventure, Augie latches on to a wild succession of occupations until his journey brings him full circle.
Yet beneath Augie's carefree nature lies a reflective person with a strong sense of responsibility to both himself and others, who in the end achieves a success of his own making.
A modern-day Columbus, Augie March is a man searching not for land but for self and soul and, ultimately, for his place in the world.
Winner of the National Book Award
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
A Midsummer Night's Dream
by William Shakespeare and David Bevington and David Scott KastanMagic, love spells, and an enchanted wood provide the materials for one of Shakespeare's most delightful comedies. When four young lovers, fleeing the Athenian law and their own mismatched rivalries, take to the forest of Athens, their lives become entangled with a feud between the King and Queen of the Fairies.
Some Athenian tradesmen, rehearsing a play for the forthcoming wedding of Duke Theseus and his bride, Hippolyta, unintentionally add to the hilarity.
The result is a marvelous mix-up of desire and enchantment, merriment and farce, all touched by Shakespeare's inimitable vision of the intriguing relationship between art and life, dreams and the waking world.
One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Eric BogosianThe first published novel of controversial Nobel Prize winning Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp.
So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength.
First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia.
Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man's will to prevail over relentless dehumanization.
Includes an Introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and an Afterword by Eric Bogosian
The Glass Menagerie
by Robert Bray and Tennessee WilliamsNo play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.
Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright.
Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world.
The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition.
A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally."
This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes."
The cover features the classic line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New Directions edition.
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte BrontëCharlotte Brontë characterized the eponymous heroine of her 1847 novel as being "as poor and plain as myself."
Presenting a heroine with neither great beauty nor entrancing charm was an unprecendented maneuver, but Brontë's instincts proved correct, for readers of her era and ever after have taken Jane Eyre into their hearts.
The author drew upon her own experience to depict Jane's struggles at Lowood, an oppressive boarding school, and her troubled career as a governess.
Unlike Jane, Brontë had the advantage of a warm family circle that shared and encouraged her literary pursuits.
She found immediate success with this saga of an orphan girl forced to make her way alone in the world, from Lowood School to Thornfield, the estate of the majestically moody Mr. Rochester, and beyond.
A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
Wuthering Heights
by Emily BrontëConsidered lurid and shocking by mid-19th-century standards, Wuthering Heights was initially thought to be such a publishing risk that its author, Emily Brontë, was asked to pay some of the publication costs.
A somber tale of consuming passions and vengeance played out against the lonely moors of northern England, the book proved to be one of the most enduring classics of English literature.
The turbulent and tempestuous love story of Cathy and Heathcliff spans two generations -- from the time Heathcliff, a strange, coarse young boy, is brought to live on the Earnshaws' windswept estate, through Cathy's marriage to Edgar Linton and Heathcliff's plans for revenge, to Cathy's death years later and the eventual union of the surviving Earnshaw and Linton heirs.
A masterpiece of imaginative fiction, Wuthering Heights (the author's only novel) remains as poignant and compelling today as it was when first published in 1847.
Catch-22
by Christopher Buckley and Joseph HellerFifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest--and most celebrated--novels of all time. In recent years it has been named to "best novels" lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer.
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy--it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service.
Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he's assigned, he'll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
Since its publication in 1961, no novel has matched Catch-22's intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war.
This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; personal essays on the genesis of the novel by the author; a wealth of critical responses and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller's personal archive; and a selection of advertisements from the original publishing campaign that helped turn Catch-22 into a cultural phenomenon.
The Stranger
by Albert CamusThrough the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."
Death Comes for the Archbishop
by Willa CatherWilla Cather's best known novel is an epic—almost mythic—story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows--gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.BONUS: The edition includes an excerpt from The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.
The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey ChaucerA group of pilgrims bound for Canterbury Cathedral agree to pass the weary miles by taking turns at storytelling.
The travelers - noble, coarse, jolly, and pious - offer a vibrant portrait of fourteenth-century English life.
Their narratives form English literature's greatest collection of chivalric romances, bawdy tales, fables, legends, and other stories.
The Canterbury Tales reflects a society in transition, as a middle class began to emerge from England's feudal system.
Craftsmen and laborers ride side by side with the gentry on the road to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket, and their discussions and arguments about ethical issues mirror their changing world.
The pilgrims' conversations and stories also reveal their individual personalities, and Chaucer's vivid, realistic characterizations assured the Tales an instant and enduring success.
Each pilgrim's story can be read separately and appreciated in its own right; all appear here in a lucid translation into modern English verse by J. U. Nicolson.
The Cherry Orchard
by Anton Chekhov and Laurence SenelickAnton Chekhov is a unique force in modern drama, his works cherished for their brilliant wit and insight into the human condition.
In this stunning new translation of one of Chekhov's most popular and beloved plays, Laurence Senelick presents a fresh perspective on the master playwright and his groundbreaking dramas.
He brings this timeless trial of art and love to life as memorable characters have clashing desires and lose balance in the shifting eruptions of society and a modernizing Russia.
Supplementing the play is an account of Chekhov's life; a note on the translation; an introduction to the work; and variant lines, often removed due to government censorship, which illuminate the context in which they were written.
This edition is the perfect guide to enriching our understanding of this great dramatist or to staging a production.
The Awakening
by Kate ChopinWhen first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity.
Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the straitened confines of her domestic situation.
Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. Edmund Wilson characterized it as a work "quite uninhibited and beautifully written, which anticipates D. H. Lawrence in its treatment of infidelity."
Although the theme of marital infidelity no longer shocks, few novels have plumbed the psychology of a woman involved in an illicit relationship with the perception, artistry, and honesty that Kate Chopin brought to The Awakening.
Now available in this inexpensive edition, it offers a powerful and provocative reading experience to modern readers.
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph ConradThis Norton Critical Edition includes:- A newly edited text based on the first English book edition (1902), the last version to which Conrad is known to have actively contributed.
"Textual History and Editing Principles" provides an overview of the textual controversies and ambiguities perpetually surrounding Heart of Darkness.
- Background and source materials on colonialism and the Congo, nineteenth-century attitudes toward race, Conrad in the Congo, and Conrad on art and literature.
- Fifteen illustrations. - Seven contemporary responses to the novella along with eighteen essays in criticism--ten of them new to the Fifth Edition,including an entirely new subsection on film adaptations of Heart of Darkness.
- A Chronology and an updated Selected Bibliography.
The Last of the Mohicans
by James Fenimore CooperA massacre at a colonial garrison, the kidnapping of two pioneer sisters by Iroquois tribesmen, the treachery of a renegade brave, and the ambush of innocent settlers create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of American frontier life in this classic 18th-century adventure -- the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales.
First published in 1826, the story -- set in the forests of upper New York State during the French and Indian War -- movingly portrays the relationship between Hawkeye, a gallant, courageous woodsman, and his loyal Mohican friends, Chingachgook and Uncas.
Embroiled in one of the war's bloody battles, they attempt to lead the abducted Munro sisters to safety but find themselves instead in the midst of a final, tragic confrontation between rival war parties.
Imaginative and innovative, The Last of the Mohicans quickly became the most widely read work of the day, solidifying the popularity of America's first successful novelist in the United States and Europe.
Required reading in many American literature classics, the novel presents a stirring picture of a vanishing people and the end to a way of life in the eastern forests.
The Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen CraneThe finest novel of the Civil War, and one of the greatest battle stories ever toldThe question of courage enters Henry Fleming&’s mind the moment he dons the blue uniform of the Union Army. But his first firefight reveals the emptiness of words such as bravery and fear. Pinned in by his comrades, he can only fire his rifle like a cog in a machine. There is no chance to run.Then comes the true test. Waking from a nap, Henry sees the enemy advancing once again. Gripped by an unshakable terror, he flees—from his regiment, from duty, from everything he wanted to believe about himself. A corpse bears witness to his shame.The nightmare has come true. Henry Fleming is a coward. Only one thing can save him now: a visible wound, the red badge of courage. With his regiment&’s colors in hand, Henry looks the enemy in the eye—and charges.Stephen Crane was born six years after Lee&’s surrender at Appomattox and had yet to see a battlefield when he wrote The Red Badge of Courage. Nevertheless, the novel is widely regarded as one of the most realistic depictions of war ever published, and a masterpiece of American literature.This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel DefoeThought to have been inspired by the true-life experiences of a marooned sailor, Robinson Crusoe tells the story of the sole survivor of a shipwreck, stranded on a Caribbean island, who prevails against all odds, enduring three decades of solitude while mastering both himself and his strange new world. First published in 1719, the novel has long been one of the English language's great adventure stories.In the journal he shares with us, the endearing, goatskin-clad castaway recounts the details of his lonely existence and his many adventures, including a fierce battle with cannibals and a daring rescue of Friday, the man who becomes his trusted servant and companion. Defoe's brilliant and imaginative use of detail renders Crusoe's island world utterly convincing. In reclaiming his humanity from the savagery of his circumstances, the hero humbly acquires the qualities of courage, patience, ingenuity, and industry.Hailed as the first great English novel, Robinson Crusoe spawned legions of imitations, none of which surpass the original. All readers with a taste for adventure will relish this inexpensive edition of one of the most popular and influential books ever written.