Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

    Ranging from the 19th to the 20th centuries, writers include James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, Richard Edward Connell, Henri Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Jack London, Henri Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe.

    A famous short story

    Led by the title character, the women of the warring city-states of Greece agree to withhold sexual favours with their husbands until they agree to cease fighting. The war of the sexes that ensues makes Lysistrata a bawdy comedy without peer in the history of theatre.

    "A & P" is a comic short story written by John Updike in 1961 in which the hero and first person narrator takes a stand for what is right and therefore has hope for a better future

    Its fourteen-year-old heroine Wendla is killed by abortion pills. The young Moritz terrorized by the world around him and especially by his teachers shoots himself. The ending seems likely to be the suicide of Moritz's friend Melchior but in a confrontation with a mysterious stranger (the famous Masked Man) he finally manages to shed his illusions and face the consequences.

    It is a revision of Thomas Killigrew's play "Thomaso", or "The Wanderer" (1664), and features multiple plot lines, dealing with the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen and women in Naples at Carnival time. According to Restoration poet John Dryden, it "lacks the manly vitality of Killigrew's play, but shows greater refinement of expression." The play stood for three centuries as "Behn's most popular and most respected play."

    

    Bergin.Illustrated with drawings by Aldo Salvadori

    You died before I had time——Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco sealAnd a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you.Ach, du.In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the rollerOf wars, wars, wars.But the name of the town is common. My Polack friendSays there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root,I never could talk to you.The tongue stuck in my jaw.It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich,I could hardly speak.I thought every German was you. And the language obsceneAn engine, an engineChuffing me off like a Jew.A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew.I think I may well be a Jew.The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true.With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc packI may be a bit of a Jew.I have always been scared of you,With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustacheAnd your Aryan eye, bright blue.Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——Not God but a swastikaSo black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you,A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man whoBit my pretty red heart in two.I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do.But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do.I made a model of you,A man in black with a Meinkampf lookAnd a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do.So daddy, I’m finally through.The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through.If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year,Seven years, if you want to know.Daddy, you can lie back now.There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you.They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you.Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.