This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America's limitless promise. Yet -- in part...

"At the turn of the twentieth century, as he composes a treatise on melancholy, Jacov Reinhardt sets off from his small Croatian village in search of his hero and unwitting mentor, Emiliano Gomez Carrasquilla, who is rumored to have disappeared into the South American jungle - not lost, mind you, but retired. Jacov's narcissistic preoccupation with melancholy consumes him, and as he desperately recounts the myth of his journey to his trusted but ailing...

This is the collection that true fans of horror fiction have been waiting for: sixteen of H.P. Lovecraft's most horrifying visions, including Lovecraft's masterpiece, The Shadow Out of Time-- the shocking revelation of the mysterious forces that hold all mankind in their fearsome grip. I think it is beyond doubt that H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.

"Karl Marx's 1848 text is reframed in this revised Norton Critical Edition in the context of twenty-first-century theoretical debates, capitalist globalization, the information technology revolution, and contemporary struggles up to and including the 2011 "Arab Spring." Simultaneously extolled in its day as truth incarnate and the inspiration for a life-and-death struggle for humankind's liberation and condemned as the vilest of propaganda on behalf...

Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer prize-winning novel of a China that was now in a contemporary classics edition. Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In the Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when the...

"The Greater Middle East, the vast region between the Mediterranean and China encompassing much of the Arab world, parts of northern Africa, and Asia, existed for millennia as the crossroads of empire: Macedonian, Mongol, Ottoman, Russian, British. But with the dissolution of empires in the twentieth century, postcolonial states have struggled to maintain stability in the face of power struggles between factions, leadership vaccuums, and the fact...

This is one of those books that seem as though someone should have written it years ago--but better late than never. Flag: An American Biography is a must-read for scholars, history buffs, patriotic organizations, flag wavers, flag burners, or anyone who owns an American flag or has seen one in the last forty-eight hours. This iconic symbol of the nation, which is so ubiquitous in our lives, needs a history, and this is the definitive history of the...

"Although historians are increasingly giving Reagan and John Paul II due credit for their roles in ending the Cold War, Kengor reveals the depth and significance of the bond between the president and the pope. New details based on the author's unique access to Reagan insiders and his tireless archival research are provided. The role of the Marian apparition at Fatima on May 13, 1917 is explored as key to understanding both the bond between JP II and...

When In Our Time was published in 1925, it was praised by Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and it earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories "Indian Camp," "The...