Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the few people who do not possess but are themselves possessed by this terrain. In so doing he reveals an experience that is part of our heritage and mythology. For Lyle, Ray, Clara, and App, the struggle to survive on an independent family ranch is a series of blameless failures and unacclaimed successes that illuminate the Western character. The Meadow evokes a sense of place that can be achieved only by someone who knows it intimately.

    The remarkable novels presented here in this Library of America volume combine brilliant satire with a lingering affection for the men and women, who, as Lewis wrote of Babbitt, "want "to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late.""Main Street (1920), Lewis's first triumph, was a phenomenal event in American publishing and cultural history. Lewis's idealistic, imaginative heroine, Carol Kennicott, longs "to get [her] hands on one of those prairie towns and make it beautiful," but when her doctor husband brings her to Gopher Prairie, she finds that the romance of the American frontier has dwindled to the drab reality of the American Middle West. Carol first struggles against and then flees the social tyrannies and cultural emptiness of Gopher Prairie, only to submit at last to the conventions of village life. The great romantic satire of its decade, Main Street is a wry, sad, funny account of a woman who attempts to challenge the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of her community."I know of no American novel that more accurately presents the real America," wrote H.L. Mencken when Babbitt appeared in 1922. "As an old professor of Babbittry I welcome him as an almost perfect specimen. Every American city swarms with his brothers. He is America incarnate, exuberant and exquisite."In the character of George F. Babbitt, the boisterous, vulgar, worried, gadget-loving real estate man from Zenith, Lewis fashioned a new and enduring figure in American literature—the total conformist. Babbitt is a "joiner," who thinks and feels with the crowd. Lewis surrounds him with a gallery of familiar American types—small businessman, Rotarians, Elks, boosters, supporters of evangelical Christianity. In biting satirical scenes of club lunches, after-dinner speeches, trade association conventions, fishing trips and Sunday School committees, Lewis reproduces the noisy restlessness of American commercial culture.In 1930 Sinclair Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, largely for his achievement in Babbitt. These early novels not only define a crucial period in American history—from America's "coming of age" just before World War I to the dizzying boom of the twenties—they also continue to astonish us with essential truths about the country we live in today.

    Arranged chronologically and containing many pieces restored to the form in which Twain intended them to appear, the volumes show with unprecedented clarity the literary evolution of Mark Twain over six decades of his career.The nearly two hundred separate items in this volume cover the years from 1852 to 1890. As a riverboat pilot, Confederate irregular, silver miner, frontier journalist, and publisher, Twain witnessed the tragicomic beginning of the Civil War in Missouri, the frenzied opening of the West, and the feverish corruption, avarice, and ambition of the Reconstruction era. He wrote about political bosses, jumping frogs, robber barons, cats, women’s suffrage, temperance, petrified men, the bicycle, the Franco-Prussian War, the telephone, the income tax, the insanity defense, injudicious swearing, and the advisability of political candidates preemptively telling the worst about themselves before others get around to it.Among the stories included here are “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” which won him instant fame when published in 1865, “Cannibalism in the Cars,” “The Invalid’s Story,” and the charming “A Cat’s Tale,” written for his daughters’ private amusement. This volume also presents several of his famous and successful speeches and toasts, such as “Woman—God Bless Her,” “The Babies,” and “Advice to Youth.” Such writings brought Twain immense success on the public lecture and banquet circuit, as did his controversial “Whittier Birthday Speech,” which portrayed Boston’s most revered men of letters as a band of desperadoes.“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand,” he once wrote. A master of deadpan hilarity, a storyteller who fashioned an exuberant style rooted in the idiom of his western origins, and an enemy of injustice who used scathing invective and subtle satire to expose the “humbug” of his time, Twain, like Franklin, Whitman, and Lincoln, helped shape the American language into a unique democratic idiom that was to be heard around the world.The publishing history of every story, sketch, and speech in this volume has been thoroughly researched, and in each instance the most authoritative text has been reproduced. This collection also includes an extensive chronology of Twain’s life, helpful notes on the people and events referred to in his works, and a guide to the texts.

    the Osbornes -- two sisters  and a brother -- united by family ties but split  apart by different dreams. Lara, the happy young  wife, longs for the family that will make her life  whole. Connie, wild and lovely, is more like her  brother Eddy -- bright, ambitious, and ready to  seize all that life has to offer. A story of  choices... Connie is looking for wealth -- to make or to  marry. Lara, staying behind in a small Ohio town,  finds everything she cherishes threatened by fate  and by her own blind commitment. And Eddy, as Wall  Street's "wonder boy," can make  millions... if he ruthlessly uses his family and friends. A  story of marriages... Lara's held together by  devotion, Connie's shattered by infidelity and  betrayal, and Eddy's rocked by shame and prison. Torn by  conflicting loyalties, they are a family caught in  the tides of scandal... and swept toward a fate  where dreams may end or be born again...

    He loves her more, while she shoves him aside and devotes her attention to their son.

    Certain Things Last is the first one-volume edition of Anderson's stories. But what makes this book truly remarkable is that five of Anderson's very best stories appear in print here for the first time. They are: "Certain Things Last," "Fred," "The Red Dog," "Mrs. Wife," and "The Masterpiece." The discovery of these new stories makes Certain Things Last an unprecedented publishing event. The short story, not the novel or autobiography, was the form in which Sherwood Anderson excelled. And the American short story probably owes more to Sherwood Anderson than to any other American writer. It was Anderson who wrested short fiction from the upbeat conventionality of the popular magazines of the 1920s and '30s and molded it to express the isolation of individual people. Certain Things Last contains 30 stories in all, chosen from previously unpublished manuscripts and from Anderson's three story volumes, The Triumph of the Egg, Horses and Men, and Death in the Woods. Numerous stories have been meticulously restored to Anderson's original version by Professor Modlin.

    Grappling with romantic, political and philosophical turmoil, David must also confront his faith when his father, an Orthodox rabbi, shows up in Warsaw.