Markus Zusak began his career as a successful writer of young adult fiction, but for his fifth novel, Zusak set out to relate the experiences of his parents growing up during World War II for an adult audience. Zusak has said that much of the...

Martin Buber’s most influential work, I and Thou, was originally published in German as Ich and Du in 1923 and was translated into English in 1937. It is the foundational text of what has come to be called the philosophy of dialogue. This covers...

The Archaeology of Knowledge is Foucault’s historiographical treatise—his theory of how to study history—and it was first published in French in 1969. It lays out Foucault’s method for doing history, in particular how to assemble and interpret the...

Alice Walker set to work on a new novel shortly after filing for divorce from her husband in 1976. In the three years since the publication of her short story collection In Love and Trouble, Walker had become a contributing editor at Ms. Magazine,...

The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Raymond Chandler. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as Chandler's iconic hero-detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge. ...

Frank O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died" is an elegy to the jazz singer Billie Holiday, who passed away on July 17th, 1959 from cirrhosis of the liver. Holiday was known for her contralto voice, and for her ability to improvise a song on the spot. Her...

“The Loaded Dog” was published in 1901 in Henry Lawson’s short story collection titled Joe Wilson and His Mates. Since publication, the story has continued to be one of the most popular of Lawson’s short stories due to the tale’s universally...

Beetlejuice was one of Tim Burton’s first full-length movies, and established him as an unusual, singular, outrageous, and exciting director. The first screenplay for the film was written by Michael McDowell, and was apparently much darker than...

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play written by English playwright Harold Pinter in 1957. The short play is set in a single basement room. There are only two characters: Gus and Ben, hitmen waiting for a target to arrive.

The play has elements of...

"The Library of Babel" is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges. The story was originally published in Borges' 1941 collection El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, translated as The Garden of Forking Paths. It was later also included in the...

An early Hitchcock film, Rope is not among the Master of Suspense's best known films, but it is certainly notable, and includes many Hitchcockian innovations of horror and suspense. Rope is perhaps most memorable as a notable experimentation in...

Trainspotting is a British black comedy by Danny Boyle, released in 1996. It starred Ewan McGregor, Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Kevin McKidd, and Kelly Macdonald, in an ensemble cast led by McGregor’s protagonist, Mark Renton....

Hilda Doolittle is known widely by her initials, H.D. “Sea Rose” is one of the poems belonging to Sea Garden (1916), a book of poems in which H.D. examines the themes of gender, sexuality, conformity, and value by using natural scenery as...

Hilda Doolittle—known professionally as H.D.—developed a fascination with Greek mythology early in her career, and was known for harnessing the legends of myth to make broader statements about culture and feminism. In 1923, during her transition...

“Sea Violet" is part of H.D.'s first collection, Sea Garden (1916), a book of poems in which she examines themes of gender, sexuality, conformity, and value through the metaphor and symbolism of flowers. Like "Sea Rose" and "Sea Lily," also from ...

Top Gun is an iconic American action film, remembered for propelling Tom Cruise into the public eye and Hollywood stardom. While it did not fare that well with critics, it was a big hit at the box office and was lauded for its special effects and...

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is widely considered one of the most ambitious and profoundly moving plays of the late 20th century, earning the 1993 Pulitzer Prize and a place in Harold Bloom’s Western canon (interestingly,...

The Royal Tenenbaums was written by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson and released in 2001 to great acclaim. His third film, The Royal Tenenbaums, follows the development of the three gifted but troubled Tenenbaum children, and their reunion with their...

Joseph Conrad published The Secret Agent in 1907 and the work is often taken to be the major work in a trilogy of political works that Conrad published around this time (the other two are Nostromo and Under Western Eyes). The book is also taken to...

The Canterville Ghost was first published in 1887 in The Court and Society Review. The first part was published on February 23, with the second installment following on March 2. It was accompanied by illustrations. By 1887, Wilde had achieved a...

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a 2014 film created by idiosyncratic director Wes Anderson. The film is loosely inspired by the literature of early 20th century Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. Director and co-writer Anderson had never even heard of...

M is one of the high watermarks of Fritz Lang's career, and more broadly of German cinema from the Weimar era between World Wars I and II. Co-written by the director Fritz Lang and his wife Tea von Harbou, M traces the story of a child murderer,...

Edward Albee's The American Dream is a one-act play that premiered at the York Playhouse in 1961. It satirizes American family dynamics in the 1960s, blending elements of the absurd with "kitchen sink" realism. Kitchen sink realism was developed...