Newest Study Guides

Clueless is a coming-of-age teen film loosely based on Jane Austen's classic novel Emma written and directed by Amy Heckerling. It stars Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy, Stacey Dash, and Breckin Meyer. The film is set in Beverly...

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was first published in 1968. The novel tells the story of Rick Deckard and his quest to "retire" six Nexus-6 androids, the most advanced type, in 24 hours. The novel follows Deckard and a secondary character -...

Divergent is the first novel in Veronica Roth's debut trilogy of the same name, followed by Insurgent and Allegiant. Since its publication in April 2011, it has won numerous awards, including Favorite Book of 2011 in the 2011 Goodreads Choice...

In 1957, the year that his signature book, On the Road, was first printed, Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac began work on what was to become his third published work, The Dharma Bums. It was written with legendary haste in only ten writing...

First published in 1981, Mulberry and Peach is a historical fiction novel by Chinese writer Hualing Nieh. The novel is "set against the background of the Japanese occupation of China, the Communist-Nationalist struggle, the White Terror of Taiwan,...

Bound Feet and Western Dress is a memoir written by Pang-Mei Chang about her aunt, Chang Yu-i. Both of these characters are women, and Chang writes about the hardships of being a woman in China today and during the time of her aunt. One of those...

Bernard Malamud likely was best known for his novel The Natural before the Robert Redford film adaptation hit movie screens. Since then, The Natural is almost certainly the author’s most famous work of fiction. Despite the fact that his...

Set in the aftermath of the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, Arms and the Man challenges romantic ideas about war and love. Captain Bluntschli, a fleeing soldier, climbs through a Bulgarian lady's bedroom window, triggering a series of events that...

Though the precise origins of Aristotle's Poetics are not known, researchers believe that the work was composed around 330 BCE and was preserved primarily through Aristotle's students' notes. Despite its vague beginning, the Poetics has been a...

Are you there God? It's Me, Margaret, one of Judy Blume's most successful young adult novels, was published in 1970. The book appeared only shortly after Blume began her literary career, while her young children were still in preschool. Are you...

The specific circumstances surrounding the origin of Greek drama were a puzzle even in the 4th century BC. Greek drama seems to have its roots in religious celebrations that incorporated song and dance. By the 6th century BC, Athenians had...

Anthem is one of Ayn Rand's earlier works, and presages the fears of collectivism that characterize Objectivism and her later work, such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The novel is set in the future and has a universal, timeless feel in...

Nadja is a French novel written by the French author named André Breton. It is written in a genre called “surrealist narration” and is often pictured as the leading catalyst novel in the surrealist movement in France. The book was first published...

Released in 2004, Gail Jones' Sixty Lights tells the story of a woman named Lucy Strange. In the novel, she is growing up in Victorian Australia and England and is fascinated by new photographic technology, which she uses to take beautiful...

Horror fans will be disappointed to learn that there are no spectral figures commonly identified as ghosts in Henrik Ibsen’s groundbreaking stage drama Ghosts. The “ghosts” of the title are metaphorical, referring to outdated traditions and the...

The Hate U Give (2018) is George Tillman Jr.'s film based on the book The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. Directed and produced by Tillman, the film was written by Audrey Wells, shot by Mihai Mălaimare Jr., and stars Amandla Stenberg as Starr,...

Chocolat is a cinematically renowned drama, based on the book of the same name by Joanne Harris. The movie was releases on December 15, 2000, by Miramax films, and was directed by Lasse Hallström. The movie tells the story of Vianne Rocher, and...

Primo Levi's first books about his experiences through the Holocaust were autobiographical and subjective; in this, his last book, he tries to take a more analytical approach and the book is written in the style of a philosophy treatise or...

"The Trial of an Ox for Killing a Man" is a chap book from the early 1830s. Chap books were cheaply printed, crudely decorated short booklets that were sold on the street to provide some easy reading for the everyday man. This specific book was...

She's the Man is a romantic comedy film released in 2006 and starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum. Its story was inspired by Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night, and it takes many direct cues from this classical work. Director Andy Fickman...

Published in 2019, On the Come Up is a fictional teenage poverty novel that explores the life of an aspiring rapper who lives in a poor neighborhood and is perceived as a hoodlum by most of the people she knows. Her father, who was also a rapper,...

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a silent horror film that was directed by Robert Wiene in 1920 and was distributed by Decla-Bioscop in the Weimar Republic, Germany. The film stars Werner Krauss as the titular Dr. Caligari, a psychologically...

"The Snowflake Which is Now and Hence Forever" by Archibald MacLeish was written later in MacLeish's life, and was, in some ways, an answer to the philosophical, poetic and existential questions he had been posing for years in his other work....

The 400 Blows is the debut film of French director Francois Truffaut. The film was released in 1959 in France and was an unexpected success. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and at the Cannes Film Festival...