"This updated 2018 Classic edition contains the original version of William Strunk's The elements of style, plus a variety of enhancements that make this book even more useful. Written a century ago, Strunk's book is a nostalgic link to the Art Deco era and the Roaring Twenties. Many of the grammar rules listed in his book still apply today; but the English language has changed over the years, and some of these rules are now obsolete. This Classic...

A delightful collection of essays exploring reading and writing. 'In the Margins' contains Elena Ferrante's latest reflections on literature, and the works and authors that have influenced her throughout her career.

"The first-ever full reckoning with Marvel Comics' interconnected, half-million-page story, a revelatory guide to the 'epic of epics'--and to the past 60 years of American culture--from a beloved authority on the subject who read all 27,000+ Marvel superhero comics and lived to tell the tale. The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are, Douglas Wolk notes, the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created:...

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable...

Such is the lament of George Trimble, just one of the many good folk of Spoon River--late of the grave and raised from the dead to bear witness to life. Whether minister or judge, housewife or mayor, clerk or carpenter, banker, lawyer, or town drunk, these monologues form an unforgettable legacy of the private hopes, the dreams, and the aspirations, the successes and the failures, the jealousies and the betrayals, the prejudices and the disillusionments...

Encompassing fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children's books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die moves across cultures and through time to present an eclectic collection of titles, each described with the special enthusiasm readers summon when recommending a book to a friend.

For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch's Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity; Scandinavian, Celtic, and Oriental fables and myths; and the age of chivalry have been known. The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon,...

An original and probing debut work of nonfiction by a brilliant new writer, rooted in her years-long quest to study the cultural legacy of the wolf In this enthralling, kaleidoscopic exploration of wolves both real and symbolic, Erica Berry weaves historic and scientific findings alongside criticism, journalism, and memoir to illuminate the strands of our cultural constructions of predator and prey, and what it means to navigate a world in which we...

America's foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity...