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The Conversation is one of Francis Ford Coppola's lesser known films, but it is also considered one of his best. Released in 1974, during the middle of the Watergate scandal, its artful depiction of paranoia and fear in the face of improved...

"Desiree's Baby" is the most famous of Kate Chopin's many short stories. It is set before the American Civil War on two plantations in Louisiana: that of the Valmondés and of the Aubignys. The story is about a baby and racial tension between a...

Pretty Woman is considered one of the most iconic American romantic comedies. It is interpreted by many as a modern American retelling of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, in which a rich and successful benefactor plucks a naive girl from the wrong...

The Outsiders was filmed in 1983 and was helmed by the acclaimed film director Francis Ford Coppola. Despite a cast made up of up-and-coming young screen stars such as Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, and others, and the direction of...

Milos Forman is a Czech film director born on February 18, 1932 in Caslav, Czechoslovakia. As a child, both of his parents died in concentration camps and he lived with distant relatives for the duration of World War II. After graduating from King...

A Single Man is a novel by English-American author Christopher Isherwood written in 1964. The novel is set in Southern California during 1962 and tells the story of George, a British professor working at a university in Los Angeles. George is...

A Single Man is a movie directed by Tom Ford based on the novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood. It is told from the point of view of George, (Colin Firth), who is single for a number of reasons. He is single because he is not married...

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a 1958 film directed by Richard Brooks. The movie is an adaptation of the play of the same name by legendary playwright Tennessee Williams which earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. The movie met with success both...

Tobacco Road is a novel written by Erskine Caldwell. The novel was first published in 1932, set in the rural Georgia which the author knew well. It features the memorable (if not entirely pleasant) character Jeeter Lester as well as his wife, Ada,...

Originally beginning his career as a pornography writer in the 1970's, Hanif Kureishi is now an acclaimed British playwright and novelist. His stories demonstrate remarkable prose and narrative grace, with TIME naming him one of the most brilliant...

Written by prominent United States author Mary Hunter Austin, The Land of Little Rain is a novel published in 1903. The book is essentially a compilation of a series of essays lyrically exploring the various aspects of the American Southwest.

The...

Le Bel Inconnu is literally translated to "The Fair Unknown" and it is a popular folk tale that has strong ties to the legends of King Arthur, telling the popular story of a young man of questionable heritage who becomes a key player in polite...

Are You Somebody? is a deeply personal memoir written by the Irish journalist and author Nuala O’Faolain. First published in 1996, the book quickly became a bestseller and remains one of the most powerful accounts of an Irish woman’s life in the...

The Buddha in the Attic is the follow-up novel by Julie Otsuka's prize-winning novel When The Emperor Was Divine. This novel tells the story of a group of young Japanese women brought over from their home country to San Francisco as what were...

Samuel Johnson, also known as "Dr. Johnson," was born in 1709. His father, Michael Johnson, was a poor bookseller. He was born ill with tuberculosis. He faced many physical illnesses, such as being almost blind in one eye and deaf in one ear....

Written by British author Matt Ridley and published in 1999, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapter, or, Genome for short, is a popular science publication. The book has 23 chapters because of the 22 human chromosomes as well as an...

In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women is a collection of short stories written by the famous author Alice Walker. Alice Walker is an American writer, poet, and activist. She has written many books about black people and their sufferings. She...

Ten is a horror-mystery novel by noted Young-Adult author Gretchen McNeil. It was published in 2012 and since then has been translated into multiple languages.

The protagonists of Ten are Meg and Minnie, two best friends who are eager to attend a...

Bruce Dawe was in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia in 1930. Due to his family's relative lack of wealth, he was unable to complete his primary education. At the age of 16, he took various jobs to help support his family, including work at a mill...

Soren Kierkegaard composed Fear and Trembling under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio. He wrote it to discuss the stories from Genesis, and is in reference to the book of Philippians. Part of the inspiration for the book was an effort to...

The Yellow Arrow is a short allegorical story by Russian author Victor Pelvin, known for his postmodernist style and his method of incorporating pop culture and philosophy into his works. Pelvin's The Yellow Arrow has been re-published multiple...

Heda Margoulis Kovaly originally published her memoir under the title "The Victors and The Vanquished" in Canada in 1973. A second version, "I Do Not Want To Remember", was published later the same year in the U.K. The memoir tells of the years...

The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents is a collection of short stories by legendary science fiction writer H G. Wells. The introduction by Wells indicates that the bulk of the collection appeared originally in Pall Mall Budget, the Pall Gazette...

We do not know who wrote "The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee," but the anonymous author of this Eighteenth Century Chinese detective novel gives us a great insight into the way in which the criminal justice system worked in the country at that...