Fiction
All the King's Men (1946)
All the King's Men is a 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren. The novel tells the story of charismatic populist governor Willie Stark and his political machinations in the Depression-era Deep South. It is commonly thought to have been loosely inspired by the real-life story of U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, who was assassinated in 1935. Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men in 1947.
Harcourt, 661 pgs.
The Optimist's Daughter (1972)
This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel tells the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying.
Vintage Books, New York, 212 pgs.
The Distances/Poems (1960)
Charles Olson was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Consequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the language school, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist of morning." The Distances is his second collection of Poems.
Grove Press, 96 pgs.
Poems: North & South; A Cold Spring (1955)
A collection of poetry by Elizabeth Bishop, published in 1955. The book, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1956, was a revision of an earlier collection, North & South (1946), to which 17 poems were added.
Houghton Mifflin, 95 pgs.
David Copperfield (1850)
David Copperfield is a novel in the bildungsroman genre by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity. It was published as a serial in 1849 and 1850 and then as a book in 1850.
Sheldon, 191 pgs.
East of Eden (1952)
East of Eden is a novel by American author and Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Published in September 1952, the work is regarded by many to be Steinbeck's most ambitious novel and by Steinbeck himself to be his magnum opus.
The Good Earth (1931)
Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions, and rewards. “A comment upon the meaning and tragedy of life as it is lived in any age in any quarter of the globe” (The New York Times), this brilliant novel—beloved by millions—is a universal tale of an ordinary family caught in the tide of history.
John Day, 356 pgs.
Dragon's Teeth (1942)
An American in Germany fights against the rising tide of Nazi terror in this monumental saga of twentieth-century world history.
In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd’s financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed. But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only strengthened Lanny’s socialist ideals—much to the chagrin of his heiress wife, Irma, a confirmed capitalist.
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
A Streetcar Named Desire presents a sharp critique of the way the institutions and attitudes of postwar America placed restrictions on women's lives. Williams uses Blanche's and Stella's dependence on men to expose and critique the treatment of women during the transition from the old to the new South.
The Wapshot Chronicle (1957)
Pulitzer Prize winner John Cheever’s classic novel about one eccentric New England family, inspired by the author's own adolescence. By turns tragic and deeply funny, The Wapshot Chronicle is a “richly inventive and vividly told” (The New York Times Magazine) work of fiction about one very odd family.
Vintage International, 367 pgs.
Collected Poems (1985)
Robert Hayden's voice―characterized by musical diction and an exquisite feeling for the formality of pattern―is a seminal one in American life and literature. An exquisite body of work celebrating the centennial of one of the most important African-American poets of the twentieth century.
Liveright Publishing Corp., 230 pgs.
Pictures from an Institution (1954)
Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women’s college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrell’s classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire.
University of Chicago Press, 292 pgs.
In Search of Lost Time (1913)
In Search of Lost Time is a novel in seven volumes by French author Marcel Proust. This early 20th-century work is his most prominent, known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory. The most famous example of this is the "episode of the madeleine", which occurs early in the first volume.
Vintage Classics, 548 pgs.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
One of the twentieth century’s enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.
Blackstone Publishing, 440 pgs.
Kristin Lavransdatter (1922)
Kristin Lavransdatter is a trilogy of historical novels written by Sigrid Undset. The individual novels are Kransen (The Wreath), first published in 1920, Husfrue (The Wife), published in 1921, and Korset (The Cross), published in 1922.
Alfred A. Knopf, 1,128 pgs.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
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Popular Library, 292 pgs.
L'Etranger (1942)
The Outsider, is a 1942 novella written by French author Albert Camus. The first of Camus' novels published in his lifetime, the story follows Meursault, an indifferent settler in French Algeria, who, weeks after his mother's funeral, kills an unnamed Arab man in Algiers. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative before and after the killing.
Penguin Books, 132 pgs.
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is a 1975 poetry collection by the American writer John Ashbery. The title, shared with its final poem, comes from the painting of the same name by the Late Renaissance artist Parmigianino.
Penguin, 96 pgs.
Tales of the South Pacific (1947)
Tales of the South Pacific is a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of sequentially related short stories by James A. Michener about the Pacific campaign in World War II. The stories are based on observations and anecdotes he collected while stationed as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy at the Espiritu Santo Naval Base on the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides Islands.
G.K. Hall & Co., 662 pgs.
Faust (1831)
Faust is a tragic play in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, usually known in English as Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. Nearly all of Part One and the majority of Part Two are written in rhymed verse. Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. Faust is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature.
Yale University Press, 496 pgs.
Romeo and Juliet (1597)
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
Ingram, 144 pgs.
Matterhorn (2010)
It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other.
Atlantic Monthly Press, 592 pgs.
The Fixer (1966)
The Fixer won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction (Malamud's second) and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Fixer provides a fictionalized version of the Beilis case. Menahem Mendel Beilis was a Jew unjustly imprisoned in Tsarist Russia. The "Beilis trial" of 1913 caused an international uproar and Beilis was acquitted by a jury.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 356 pgs.
Don Quixote (1605)
Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. Considered a founding work of Western literature, it is often labelled as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works ever written. Don Quixote is also one of the most-translated books in the world and one of the best-selling novels of all time.
Ecco, 976 pgs.
The Power and the Glory (1940)
Seventy-five years ago, Graham Greene published The Power and the Glory, a moralist thriller that traces a line of influence back to Dostoyevsky and forward to Cormac McCarthy. Named one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century by Time magazine, it stands today as his masterpiece.
Penguin Classics, 228 pgs.
The Great Gatsby (1925)
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, the novel depicts narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
Scribner, 110 pgs.
Behind the Green Lake (2035)
Essays
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Silent Light (2035)
A Novel
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