Literary collections / American

Political Fictions

von Joan Didion

In these coolly observant essays, Joan Didion looks at the American political process and at "that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life." Through the deconstruction...

Selected Poems

von Anthony Hecht & J.D. Mcclatchy

Alongside Wallace Stevens, James Merrill, and other pillars of twentieth-century poetry, Anthony Hecht joins the Borzoi Poetry series.

Hecht, whose writing rings with the cadences of the King James Bible, and...

501 Minutes to Christ: Personal Essays

von Poe Ballantine

DUE OUT SEPTEMBER 2007, POE BALLANTINE’S second collection of personal essays follows in the tradition of Things I Like About America. Stories range from "The Irving," which details Mr. Ballantine’s diabolical...

When Last on the Mountain: The View from Writers over 50

von Vicky Lettmann & Carol Roan

Sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-wrenching, this gathering of new work by writers over fifty is always honest.

American Scriptures: An Anthology of Sacred Writings

von Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp

A groundbreaking collection of sacred Christian writings of American origin from Mormons, Shakers, Christian Scientists, and others.

"Scripture" is any work in which the authors, translators, editors, or discoverers...

The Mayflower Papers: Selected Writings of Colonial New England

von Various & Nathaniel Philbrick

The most important personal accounts of the Plymouth Colony?the key sources of Nathaniel Philbrick?s New York Times bestseller Mayflower

National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick and his father, Thomas...

A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851

von Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau's journal of 1851 reveals profound ideas and observations in the making, including wonderful writing on the natural history of Concord.

American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings

von Zitkala-Sa

Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, refuses to be caged by married and domestic life and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Kate Chopin shows Edna's...

Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches

von Mark Twain

These short fiction and prose pieces display the variety of Twain's imaginative invention, his diverse talents, and his extraordinary emotional range. Twain was a master of virtually every prose genre; in fables...

The Portable Benjamin Franklin

von Benjamin Franklin

It takes a very inclusive anthology to encompass the protean personality and range of interests of Benjamin Franklin, but The Portable Benjamin Franklin succeeds as no collection has. In addition to the complete...

Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs

von Yvonne Mccalla Sobers, Askhari Johnson Hodari & Archbishop Desmond Tutu

This little book contains the wisdom of the ages, and is guaranteed to produce a smile of appreciation at the sheer sense of the proverbs you will find inside. From advice you wish your mother had given you,...

The Portable Charles W. Chesnutt

von Charles W. Chesnutt

Collections from two of our most influential African American writers-under the general editorship of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. An icon of nineteenth-century American fiction, Charles W. Chesnutt-an incisive storyteller...

Who Is Mark Twain?

von Mark Twain

Who Is Mark Twain? is a collection of twenty six wickedly funny, thought-provoking essays by Samuel Langhorne Clemens—aka Mark Twain—none of which have ever been published before, and all of which are completely...

The Best American Crime Reporting 2009

von Jeffrey Toobin, Otto Penzler & Thomas H. Cook

Thieves, liars, and killers—it's a criminal world out there, and someone has to write about it. A thrilling collection of the year's best reportage by the aces of the true-crime genre, The Best American Crime...

The Italian American Reader

von Bill Tonelli

This anthology -- the first general-reader collection of writing by Italian American authors -- is part manifesto, part Sunday dinner. A gathering of voices old and new, some speak in the accents of another...

Literary Pasadena: The Fiction Edition

von Patricia O'Sullivan, Jervey Tervalon & Michelle Huneven

Short stories, essays and poems from the talented writers who live in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Greenhouses, Lighthouses

von Tung-Hui Hu

A poetic and provocative gesture toward cinematography, Tung-Hui Hu presents the ungraspable among memory, film, and history's tantalizing ephemera

Mediated Maternity: Contemporary American Portrayals of Bad Mothers in Literature and Popular Culture

von Linda Seidel

Mediated Maternity: Contemporary American Portrayals of Bad Mothers in Literature and Popular Culture, by Linda Seidel, explores the cultural construction of the bad mother in books, movies, and TV shows, arguing...

Landscape and Identity in North America's Southern Colonies from 1660 to 1745

von Catherine Armstrong

Through an analysis of textual representations of the American landscape, this book looks at how North America appeared in books printed on both sides of the Atlantic between the years 1660 and 1745. A variety...

White Pine and Blue Water

von Henry Beston

Here is a volume that is true Maine--as eloquent of "downeast" as a bough of fir balsam, as the thunder of a wave of a rocky shore, as the lonely splendor of the northern lights in the sky behind Katahdin. ...