This exciting new series assembles key documents and criticism concerning these works that have so recently become central components of the American literature curriculum. Each casebook will reprint documents relating to the work's historical context and reception, present the best in critical essays, and when possible, feature an interview of the author. The series will provide, for the first time, an accessible forum in which readers can come to a fuller understanding of these contemporary masterpieces and the unique aspects of American ethnic, racial, or cultural experience that they so ably portray.Perhaps more than any other single text, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helped to establish the mainstream status of the renaissance in black women's writing. This casebook presents a variety of critical approaches to this classic autobiography, along with an exclusive interview with Angelou conducted specially for this volume and a unique drawing of her childhood surroundings in Stamps, Arkansas, drawn by Angelou herself.

    Lovecraft (1890-1937), the most important American supernaturalist since Poe, has had an incalculable influence on all the horror-story writing of recent decades. Altho his supernatural fiction has been enjoying an unprecedented fame, it's not widely known that he wrote a critical history of supernatural horror in literature that has yet to be superceded as the finest historical discussion of the genre. This work is presented in this volume in its final, revised text. With incisive power, Lovecraft here formulates the esthetics of supernatural horror & summarizes the range of its literary expression from primitive folklore to the tales of his own 20th-century masters. Following a discussiom of terror-literature in ancient, medieval & renaissance culture, he launches on a critical survey of the whole history of horror fiction from the Gothic school of the 18th century (when supernatural horror found its own genre) to the time of De la Mare & M.R. James. The Castle of Otranto, Radcliffe, "Monk" Lewis, Vathek Charles Brockden Brown, Melmoth the Wanderer, Frankenstein, Bulwer-Lytton, Fouqué's Undine, Wuthering Heights, Poe (full chapter), The House of the Seven Gables, de Maupassant's The Horla, Bierce, The Turn of the Screw , M.P. Shiel, W.H. Hodgson, Machen, Blackwood & Dunsany are among those discussed in depth. He also notices a host of lesser writers--enough to draw up an extensive reading list. By charting so completely the background for his own concepts of horror & literary techniques, Lovecraft throws light on his own fiction as well as on the horror-literature which has followed. For this reason this book will be especially intriguing to those who've read his fiction as an isolated phenomenon. Any searching for a guide thru the inadequately marked region of literary horror, need search no further. Unabridged & corrected republication of 1945 edition. New introduction by E.F. Bleiler.

    WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM [1874-1965] was a British writer of novels, plays, and short stories. He was a medical student at King's College London. While a student learning midwifery in the London slum of Lambeth, He wrote Liza of Lambeth (1897). The novel was a hit, selling out its first edition in a few weeks. This success convinced Maugham to write full time. By 1914, he produced ten novels and ten plays. In World War I, he was one of the "Literary Ambulance Drivers" including Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and E. E. Cummings. While serving near Dunkirk, he proof-read Of Human Bondage (1915). Theodore Dreiser considered Of Human Bondage "a work of genius." In 1916, in the Pacific, he researched Paul Gauguin's life for his novel The Moon And Sixpence (1919). In 1928, he moved to the French Riviera, where he resided for the rest of his life. In 1947, he established the Somerset Maugham Award for British writers. V. S. Naipaul, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and Thom Gunn are some notable recipients of the award.

    He continued to write the column for almost 20 years, using it as a workshop in which to develop ideas for his later books. Yet over the course of this time, the prolific writer allowed many uncollected gems to fade into obscurity. More Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns gathers many of these fugitive pieces, unseen in decades, into a single volume. Filled with his usual obsessions—sex, booze, gambling—More Notes features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, his tortured relationships with women, and his lurid escapades on the poetry circuit. Highlighting his versatility, the book ranges from thinly veiled autobiography to fictional tales of dysfunctional suburbanites, disgraced politicians, and down-and-out sports promoters, climaxing with a long, hilarious adventure among French filmmakers, "My Friend, The Gambler," based on his experiences making the movie Barfly. From his days at the post office through his later fame, More Notes follows the entire arc of Bukowski's career, making it a valuable addition to his oeuvre.

    If you don't have time to read the whole book?then this Summary is for you!

    yet some would ensnare him in the city's intrigues: the beautiful Princess Afrianda, with powers she does not fully understand herself, and Zaius, foremost swordsman of the Temple warriors. Their paths are like nothing Conan has seen before, following labyrinthine trails he cannot imagine, thrusting him toward banishment or death. And in the dying city of Sark, the soulless High Priest Khumanos wields the legendary Sword of Onothimantos and schemes for the return of ancient gods. Qjara does not want Conan, but only one man can prevent the sacrifice of the city to the Tree of Mouths. Only one-- Conan the Outcast

    

    An astonishing piece of travel writing and a timely and insightful analysis of Islamic fundamentalism"

    Backpacking Washington details 70 routes, from the lush Hoh River Glacier Meadows to the open ridges of the Columbia Highlands and beyond. With an emphasis on weekend trips, routes range from overnight to weeklong treks and often include options for extending trips or choosing camp spots. Features: detailed route descriptions and trail maps mileage logs with campgrounds, water, and other trail elements icons for choosing family- and dog-friendly trips recommended nearby day hikes info on the state's three long-distance trails: Pacific Crest Trail, Pacific Northwest Trail, and Wonderland Trail**Mountaineers Books designates 1 percent of the sales of select guidebooks toward volunteer trail maintenance. For this book, our 1 percent of sales is going to Washington Trails Association (WTA). WTA hosts more than 750 work parties throughout Washington's Cascades and Olympics each year, with volunteers clearing downed logs after spring snowmelt, cutting away brush, retreading worn stretches of trail, and building bridges and turnpikes. Their efforts are essential to the land managers who maintain thousands of acres on shoestring budgets.

    Yet through exploring the correlation between her depressive episodes and the basic elements of female nature, over many years she discovered that what she thought was a mental disorder was actually due to a hormonal imbalance. And the best bit? She learnt what she could do and take to control it.Shocking, vivid, and a must read for women, their partners and healthcare professionals alike, I Blame the Hormones is the uplifting memoir of Caroline’s journey to pull herself through despite all the odds.

    Poetry for those wishing to know someone special while seeking the greater challenge to know themselves.

    Told in the same fanciful, irreverent style as the Hitchhiker trilogy, with scraps of scripts, letters and comments from Adams, Don't Panic is the perfect companion to one of the most successful series in publishing history.

    The famous verse that gives the title to this book is about “love”—but not the ordinary love we know from novels and movies.Speak to us of Love gives a taste of a contemporary mystic at work, trying to disrupt our dreams, illusions, and the state of unconsciousness that prevents us from enjoying life to the fullest.This is about and for the millions of people in the world who have killed their love with their own hands, and who are now miserable. They never wanted to kill it, there was no intention to kill their love, but in their unconsciousness they started possessing. Husbands possess their wives, wives possess their husbands, and parents possess their children. Teachers are trying in every possible way to possess their students. Politicians are trying to possess countries. Religions are trying to possess millions of people and control every aspect their lives.This book shows that life can only thrive in freedom. Love never allows anyone to possess it, because love is our very soul.For Osho, the basis of all our neuroses or psychoses is simple: our souls are not nourished. Love, the basic nourishment, is missing. Osho comprehensively trounces the so-called religious and philosophical approaches to life. All that is of worth is to be found, not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary; not in fantastical ideas of the “other world” beyond death, but in this very world that we find ourselves in here and now. In short, this book shows that making a simple yet utterly basic shift in our lives will awaken the silence in our beings and bring joy into our every moment.

    It offers a vast variety of insightful selections from various literature and provides a lifetime of ideas and images to contemplate and evolve with you.

    Thompson.Fearless and unsparing, the interviews detail some of the most storied episodes of Thompson's life: a savage beating at the hands of the Hell's Angels, talking football with Nixon on the 1972 Campaign Trail ('the only time in twenty years of listening to the treacherous bastard that I knew he wasn't lying'), and his unlikely run for Sheriff of Aspen. Elsewhere, passionate tirades about journalism, culture, guns, drugs, and the law showcase Thompson's voice at its fiercest.Arranged chronologically, and prefaced with Anita Thompson's moving account of her husband's last years, the interviews present Hunter in all his fractured brilliance and provide an exceptional portrait of his times.