"In America, censorship surges in periods of demographic and political change. Its primary purpose is to silence challenges to an established elite or norm. Today, censorship is part of a larger assault on such American institutions as schools, public libraries, and universities, the better to establish more control over the people--while also pilfering their wallets. In this concise look at censorship, author James LaRue explores the topic through...

"W.H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise BREAKING BREAD WITH THE DEAD, distinguished professor and author Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the great writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present. Today we are battling too much information, a society changing at lightning speed, algorithms aimed at shaping our every move,...

"Acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. In reintroducing ancient virtues that are as relevant and essential today as ever, Prior draws on the best classical and Christian thinkers, including Aristotle, Aquinas, and...

Sad when the swallows leave for the winter, young Juan prepares to welcome them back to the old California Mission at Capistrano on St. Joseph's Day the next spring.

From the New York times best-selling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes the riveting story of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage--an exploration of motherhood, art and new love.

Meet the monsters in this who's who of the baddest of the bad! Like those supernatural beasts everyone knows and fears-the bloodsucking vampire, Count Dracula, and that eight-foot-tall mash-up of corpses, Frankenstein's Monster. Or that scariest of mummies, Cheops, who scientists revived after 4,700 years-big mistake! Or more horrifying yet, the Horla, an invisible, havoc-wreaking creature that herds humans like cattle and feeds of their souls. �...

Valentine and Proteus are devoted comrades ― until they travel to Milan and meet Silvia, the Duke's ravishing daughter. Torn between the bonds of friendship and the lure of romance, the two gentlemen are further bedeviled by Proteus's prior commitment to Julia, his hometown sweetheart, and the Duke's disdain for Valentine. Thus the stage is set for a comic spree involving a daring escape into a forest, capture by outlaws, and the antics of a clown...

This volume presents an exploration of poetry and feeling, introducing poems selected by the author as emblematic because they suggest something crucial about the nature of poetry itself, and offering his insights on how the poems should be read. In this guide, the author reaches out to all those who may be disaffected by the mere mention of poetry and instructs the reader to focus on a personal, emotional response.

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick With extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity, George Orwell s 1984 takes on new life in this hardcover edition. Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power. The New Yorker   In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought...

Louise Fitzhugh's books are full of resistance: to liars, to conformity, to authority, and even (radically, for a children's author) to make-believe. As a commercial children's author and lesbian, Fitzhugh often had to disguise the nature of her most intimate relationships. She lived her life as a dissenter--a friend to underdogs, outsiders, and artists--and her masterpiece remains long after her death to influence and provoke new generations of readers....