Newest Study Guides

The Journal of John Woolman is one of the most successful and widely read; in fact, since it's first printing in 1774, it has never been out of print. So, who exactly was John Woolman?

Born in 1720, Woolman was an American merchant, journalist and...

About a Mountain is an essay-like book-length narrative published in 2010 by American author-essayist John D’Agata. At 240 pages long, D’Agata tells the story of himself in Las Vegas, following a case of a nuclear-waste storage plan by the...

It is not entirely clear on which day Aphra Behn was born, but we know that she was baptized on December 14th, 1640, in the little church that sat quietly in the shade of Canterbury Cathedral in the south of England where she was born. One of the...

It would be easy to credit Walt Disney with making Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea an adventurous cultural phenomenon, but in fact, credit should actually go to French author Jules Verne, whose penned this futuristic novel in 1870, almost...

To this day, scholars are unsure why Kant wrote this text, and bicker constantly about Kant's intentions when he wrote it, and his inspiration for doing so. What they can agree on, however, is that it was the most influential writings on the...

Hegel believed that history follows the dictates of reason - in other words, history is fluid, interpretive, and written retrospectively according to how we understand the facts as we see them. Hegel makes history into more of a science than an...

To read the beginning of the Feminist Manifesto, one could close one's eyes and believe oneself to be in the middle of the Women's March, or at the very least, burning bra after bra as the sexual revolution inspired women everywhere to demand...

If Cher's nineteen seventies hit "Half Breed" were a novel, this would be it; like the song, it tells the story of a protagonist on the cusp of adulthood, struggling with never quite fitting in with either their Native American or their white...

'The Secret Lion' is a well-known published text written by American author Alberto Alvaro Rios. It is narrated from the position of a mnemonic adult but with a child's eye and voice, which gives the story a good deal of humor and wit. Through...

2011 McArthur Fellow Alicia Elizabeth Stallings is an American poet, and also a renowned translator of the poems of others. From an early age, Stallings was captivated by classical civilizations and studied Classics at the University of Georgia...

Most poets credit philosophies, natural beauty, and all things esoteric as their inspiration, but Vijay Seshadri credits his influences as American poetry heavyweights Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Seshadri is an American poet and essayist of...

The Giving Tree is a children's illustrated book, written by Shel Silverstein, and published on in 1964 by Harper & Row. The book was widely acclaimed for dealing with mature themes and conveying a deep moral of sacrifice and unrequited love.

Goodnight Moon was written by Margaret Wise Brown with illustrations by Clement Hurd and published in 1947. Although today considered a classic of children’s literature that is more likely than not to be found in a home with a pre-school child as...

The City of Embers, written by Jeanne DuPrau, is the first in the eponymous series, and was published in 2003 under the genre of children's science-fiction. The book was followed by three sequels and a comic book to follow in 2012, illustrated by...

Moon Over Manifest is children’s novel based on real historical events that happened in The United States. It is the first book written by Clare Vanderpool and was published on May 2, 1995. The story centers around a young girl named Abilene, and...

Ramona Quimby has a vivid imagination and alot of spunk, which sometimes earns her the rather unfair reputation of being a bit of a pest. Of course, she doesn't mean to be a pest. Circumstances conspire with each other to make her seem that way....

In 1964 Shel Silverstein was a uniquely prolific and productive writer of children’s books. On the heels of his first such book published a year earlier, 1964 saw the publication of four books for his juvenile audience including perennial...

James Moloney is an Australian-born writer, whose work is largely aimed at children and young readers, although he has written novels for adults. Since his first book was published in 1992, Moloney has been nominated for a large number of literary...

In Time is a 2011 sci-fi action thriller written and directed by Andrew Niccol. The film was produced by Marc Abraham, Eric Newman along with Niccol and was made for an estimated $40,000,000 budget and returned $173,930,596 in gross sales...

Author and cancer doctor Rachel Naomi Remen's 2001 novel My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging tells readers stories of kindness and joy. She tells a story about her Rabbi grandpa, a man that saw life in a very...

For many relatively young readers, Stephen Chbosky's novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of the most important books of their lives. Naturally, when a film version of the 1999 novel was first announced - originally with the legendary John...

The Martian, a science fiction survival film directed by Ridley Scott, is the big screen adaptation of the 2011 novel of the same name, written by Andy Weir. It tells the story of Mark Watney, a botanist turned astronaut, played by Matt Damon, who...

"Shakespeare Behind Bars" is a movie documentary that tells the story of the most unlikely Shakespeare Company in the world. It was one of only sixteen documentaries out of six hundred and twenty four submissions to be selected for its world...

There is an expression about saving the best till last; this is exactly what Jim Crace did when he penned his final novel, Harvest. Even before he had finished writing the novel, Crace announced that it would be his final one. He stuck doggedly to...