This is an old revision of the document!
This list is a work in process. Feel free to update. It's been a while since I last reviewed this list.
--- //[[dan.malosh@state.mn.us|Dan Malosh @ MN1A Regional]] 2013/05/15 16:09//
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ANNOTATION: Epic historical novel portrays five aristocratic families against the background of Russian social life during the Napoleonic Wars (1805-1814). Depicts campaign battles, the burning of Moscow, and the French army's winter retreat.
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ANNOTATION: A satirical, frightening novel about a future time under a totalitarian regime, where the people believe ignorance is strength and war is peace. For high school and older readers.
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ANNOTATION: Deals with a single day - June 16, 1904 - in the life of Leopold Bloom, a Dublin advertising salesman. The stream-of-consciousness style and the use of interior monologues expose the personalities of the characters.
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ANNOTATION: Incarcerated and awaiting trial, widowed middle-aged professor Humbert Humbert tells of his erotic obsession with preadolescent girls–particularly twelve-year-old Dolly Haze, whom he calls Lolita. Humbert details his fascination with Lolita and describes their bizarre road trip.
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ANNOTATION: In 1928 Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the Compson brothers–Quentin, Jason, and the “idiot” son Benjy–narrate events that trace the gradual disintegration of the family and include the ostracism of their wanton sister, Caddy.
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ANNOTATION: Classic novel of a young black man's search for identity. Follows the unnamed protagonist from his youth in a Southern town through the depression years in Harlem, where he examines and rejects the values thrust on him by both whites and blacks. National Book Award 1953.
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ANNOTATION: During summer visits to the Scottish coast, members of the Ramsey family reveal their personal challenges and innermost thoughts. Youngest child James must forfeit a yearned-for visit to the lighthouse. Ten years later, James, surviving family members, and former guests complete the long-delayed outing. Includes Eudora Welty's 1981 foreword.
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ANNOTATION: Robert Fagles's 1990 translation of the Greek epic poem written during the eighth century B.C.E. and attributed to Homer. Relates the events of a few days of battle near the end of the Trojan War. Focuses on Achilles's withdrawal from the fight and its disastrous effects on the Greek campaign.
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ANNOTATION: Robert Fagles's 1996 translation of the Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. After the Trojan War, Odysseus begins a ten-year voyage back to Ithaca during which he relies on his wit and wiliness to survive encounters with Poseidon, god of oceans, and other divine and natural forces.
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ANNOTATION: A classic novel of social customs in late eighteenth-century England. Depicts the personality clash between Elizabeth Bennet, one of five daughters of a country gentleman, and prosperous, aristocratic landowner Fitzwilliam Darcy, which eventually develops into courtship.
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ANNOTATION: John Ciardi's faithful translation of Dante's classic epic poem in its entirety. Dante describes being lost in a frightening forest, meeting the poet Virgil, and being conducted by Virgil through hell (The Inferno), purgatory (The Purgatorio), and paradise (The Paradiso).
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ANNOTATION: A poetic comedy from fourteenth-century England. During the annual April pilgrimage to Thomas a Becket's shrine at Canterbury, the travelers stop at the Tabard Inn, where their host suggests a story-telling contest. The jovial tellers of the ribald tales include a friar, summoner, nun's priest, and miller.
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ANNOTATION: Published in 1726 as a scornful satire on humankind, this novel follows the travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver into remote and fanciful nations of the world. On his voyages he encounters miniature people, giants, horses with human reason, and a flying island.
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ANNOTATION: A morality tale set in a middle-class English town. The main characters show the contrast between a shallow, selfish life and one made worthwhile by the characters' vital response to the world around them.
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ANNOTATION: Portrays traditional Ibo society in nineteenth-century Nigeria and one of its great men, Okonkwo. Through rituals, the lives of the individual and the community are unified, giving them order and significance. But the time-honored system of beliefs and behavior falls apart with the arrival of missionaries and colonists.
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ANNOTATION: As Christmas vacation begins, Holden Caulfield recounts his feelings and reactions to flunking out of Pencey, his third prep school. Instead of heading straight home, he wanders around New York City. This account of his adventures conveys his dismay at the adult world. Strong language. For senior high and older readers.
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ANNOTATION: A romantic Civil War epic in which Scarlet O' Hara, a forceful and ruthless heroine, and Rhett Butler, a war profiteer, play out their tempestuous love affair against the background of the war-torn South.
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ANNOTATION: 1820s to 1920s. Latin American epic tale follows seven generations of the Buendía family through triumphs and disasters that parallel the fortunes and misfortunes of their utopian town, Macondo. By the Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author.
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ANNOTATION: The glitter and recklessness of the Jazz Age is the backdrop for this novel about Jay Gatsby's desperate attempt to recapture the past, and along with it, the love of Daisy Buchanan. Amid extravagant parties at Gatsby's palatial estate, his neighbor narrates the story of his obsession with the American dream.
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ANNOTATION: Bombardier Yossarian desperately tries to stay alive during World War II. Military rules make it impossible for anyone to achieve the combat quota necessary to quit flying. Yossarian and his buddies concoct ways to avoid the ridiculous orders of their officers.
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ANNOTATION: Related in kaleidoscopic fashion and set in rural Ohio during the period immediately following the Civil War, this chronicle of slavery and its aftermath traces the life of Sethe, a former slave. Sethe has a secret in her past so horrific that it has alienated the community, driven off her two sons, isolated her surviving daughter, and threatened her new, loving relationship with Paul D., also a former slave.
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ANNOTATION: Steinbeck's classic tale of the Joads, who, like many other families during the Great Depression, are driven from their homestead by drought, economic hardship, and the encroachment of large agricultural interests. They leave Oklahoma in search of a better life in California but meet with hardship and injustice.
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ANNOTATION: Biting satire tells of Saleem Sinai, who is born at the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947–the instant of the birth of the new state of India. From that moment, his life is magically entwined with India's fate as a nation. Saleem's particular gift is a 'cucumber' of a nose with which he goes through life smelling his way.
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ANNOTATION: Series of essays in which the author examines various threats to human freedom predicted in his 1930s satirical novel Brave New World. Discusses overpopulation, government propaganda, brainwashing, chemically induced as well as subconsciously suggested persuasion, and education, along with possible countermeasures.
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ANNOTATION: Selection of critical essays exploring the evolution and impact of Virginia Woolf's 1925 classic novel Mrs. Dalloway and the companion piece, “Mrs. Dalloway's Party.” Includes the two works, Woolf's journal entries and letters regarding the works' creation, and various writers' commentary. Includes editor's introduction.
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ANNOTATION: This volume covers Wright's prose through 1940. The editor restores Wright's original manuscripts, which had been extensively changed for publication. Includes Lawd Today!, Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, How “Bigger” Was Born, a literary chronology, and notes by Arnold Rampersad.
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ANNOTATION: Classic treatise by a French aristocrat comprehensively examines the underpinnings of American democratic institutions–including the rights and powers provided by the Constitution, forms of governments, and concepts of freedom and equality. Also analyzes the influence of democratic values on intellectual movements, customs, and political society. 2000 translation by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop.
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ANNOTATION: First published in Paris in 1835, this volume contains a philosophical examination of social and economic as well as political change, traced through both general experience and the American experience.
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ANNOTATION: Classic of biology and evolution that introduced an account of how every species develops or evolves from a previous one.
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ANNOTATION: Excerpts from the writings of the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian and traveler known as the “father of history,” translated by Walter Blanco. Describes the wars and worlds, even folktales and gossip, of ancient Greece, Persia, Egypt, and Italy.
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ANNOTATION: The eighteenth-century French philosopher's major work advocating the principles of political right, which declared that the general will is the rightful authority in matters of controversy.
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ANNOTATION: Originally intended as part of a six-volume work, this volume is the only one published during the author's lifetime. Marx examines the process of producing capital, including the value of commodities, the circulation of money, the role of labor and machinery in manufacture, and the question of accumulation, particularly as it applies to agriculture and to industry.
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ANNOTATION: Compiled by Friedrick Engels, Marx's lifelong partner, and published posthumously. This volume contains an extensive introduction by Ernest Mandel. The author continues with technical analyses of aspects of capitalism that were initiated in Volume 1, including the question of supply and demand and the ownership of private property.
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ANNOTATION: Compiled by Frederick Engels and published more than a decade after Marx's death. Certain subjects, such as world markets and competition, are not fully developed in the original manuscript, but this volume examines the process of capitalist production in its totality. Controversial from the start, Marx shows how he would have solved the problems of what he believed would be the collapse of capitalism.
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ANNOTATION: Selected writings of Florentine politician Niccol ̣Machiavelli (1468-1527), in which he expounds his philosophy on government and power. Includes The Prince, The Mandrake–a satire–excerpts from The Art of War and The Discourses, and essays about Pisa, French people, Germany, and the ruling Medici. Edited and translated by Peter Constantine.
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ANNOTATION: The first nine books take Augustine from his birth in fourth-century Roman North Africa through his conversion to Christianity and baptism in Milan at the age of thirty-three. In the final four books, Augustine, who is by now a Catholic bishop, examines the nature of God and prayer, ponders such mysteries as creation, and interprets the Holy Scriptures.
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ANNOTATION: An English philosopher discusses the idea of absolute government that is embedded in a contract between the citizens and a sovereign authority. Examines human passion and its effect on reason and the need to restrain emotions.
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ANNOTATION: Written in the fifth century B.C. by an Athenian commander, this is a history of the twenty-seven-year conflict between Athens, a democratic state and sea power, and the states of the Peloponnese headed by Sparta, a conservative power with an efficient military force.
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ANNOTATION: As the Ring cycle begins, Frodo, a home-loving hobbit, inherits the magic ring that his Uncle Bilbo brought back from his adventures in The Hobbit (DB 48978). To protect the ring from the powers of darkness, Frodo must make a long, dangerous journey.
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ANNOTATION: In this sequel to The Fellowship of the Ring, the now-separated companions of the Ring meet Saruman the wizard, cross the Dead Marshes, and prepare for the Great War in which the power of the Ring will be undone.
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ANNOTATION: The King James Version of the Old and New Testaments as read by Alexander Scourby in the early 1950s.
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ANNOTATION: A comprehensive edition of Twain's 1885 tale about a boy who runs away from home and floats down the Mississippi on a raft with an escaping slave. Includes four episodes originally deleted from the first edition, an introduction by Twain biographer Justin Kaplan, and an addendum of explanatory and interpretive notes.
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ANNOTATION: Tom Sawyer's friend young Huck Finn explains the reasons he is running away from home and recounts his exploits floating down the Mississippi River on a raft with Jim, an escaped slave.
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ANNOTATION: Argentinean-born author chronicles his rereading of twelve personal literary favorites in one year, in a diary that consists, he says, “of notes, reflections, impressions of travel, sketches of friends, of events public and private.” Selections include Atwood's Surfacing, Cervantes's Don Quixote, and Kipling's Kim.
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ANNOTATION: A complex semi-autobiographical work by the French author begins with part one, Swann's Way, which covers Marcel's youth and the love story of M. Swann. In part two, Within a Budding Grove, Marcel's boyish affair with Gilberte ends, and he goes off to the seaside for his health. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.
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ANNOTATION: In part three, The Germantes Way, Marcel, now a young man of fashion, moves in the exclusive social circle of the Duchess de Guermantes. Part four, Cities of the Plain, concerns the homosexual Baron de Charlus and Marcel's growing attraction to Albertine. The Dreyfus Affair is included in the background. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.
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ANNOTATION: Part five, The Captive, finds Marcel living with Albertine, but tortured by jealousy of her lesbian friends. In part six, The Fugitive, Albertine leaves Marcel and is killed in an accident. The concluding book seven, Time Regained, shows how World War I affected the lives of all the characters. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.
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ANNOTATION: First published in 1925 and based on an actual murder case, this classic novel depicts the dark side of the American dream in the story of a young man who will do almost anything to gain wealth and social acceptance. While he loves a poor factory worker who is carrying his child, he is dazzled by a rich woman who seems to embody all his fantasies.
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ANNOTATION: A man arrives in Hollywood hoping for success as a scene designer, but he becomes only another nondescript, unsuccessful character on the fringes of Hollywood studios.
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ANNOTATION: Recounts the experiences, sensations, and thoughts of a young expatriate American writer and his friends in 1930s Paris as they scrounge for food, read and converse, and have relationships. The author's autobiographical first novel initially published in 1934.
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ANNOTATION: In searching for the murderer of his partner, Sam Spade runs afoul of the police and several characters all in search of a mysterious statuette.
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ANNOTATION: A tale set in Victorian England on an alternate Earth. Young Lyra Belacqua and her daemon enjoy an idyllic life among the scholars at Jordan College. Then her friend Roger and other children are abducted by the Gobblers. Venturing north in pursuit, Lyra encounters an alien and sinister world.
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ANNOTATION: Lyra and her daemon are joined in Ci'gazze by twelve-year-old Will, who is searching for his long-lost explorer father. Will proves his mettle–losing two fingers in a fight–and now bears the magical Subtle Knife.
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ANNOTATION: In this continuation of The Subtle Knife Lyra is hidden in a cave by her mother, Mrs. Coulter. Two angels want Will and his magic knife to accompany them to Lord Asriel, but Will is determined to find Lyra first.
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ANNOTATION: A tale about the exploits of Bishop Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant, French Catholic priests who organized pioneer and Indian missions throughout the newly created diocese of New Mexico in the second half of the nineteenth century.
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ANNOTATION: Joyce Crick's new translation of Freud's first edition of his classic work written in 1899. Introductory material describes how Freud incorporated autobiography into his theoretical writing; also provides glimpses of daily life in late-nineteenth-century Vienna.
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ANNOTATION: The 19th-century American historian wrote this partial autobiography in 1905. He described his early education as “18th-century” and found it inadequate preparation for dealing with the complex forces of modern life.
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ANNOTATION: Selections taken from the writings of Chairman Mao Tsetung showing his aims for the communist revolution in China and the development of his political and social philosophy.
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ANNOTATION: Often called the father of American psychology, the author published this “study in human nature” in 1902. A pragmatist, he argues that any article of religious faith is “true” if it provides emotional satisfaction, and that all religious experiences are of equal value.
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ANNOTATION: Waugh's classic exploration of faith, tradition, and moral values in a rapidly changing Britain. Charles Ryder narrates the story of an aristocratic English Catholic family between the First and Second World Wars. Charles first meets alcoholic Sebastian Flyte at Oxford and later falls in love with his married sister, Julia.
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ANNOTATION: The author criticizes man's large-scale use of chemical insecticides and weed killers, warning that such a policy jeopardizes the environment and damages wildlife.
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ANNOTATION: Outlines and explains the author's theory of economics, which has been of tremendous significance in the world economic situation.
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ANNOTATION: The hero of this novel is a young, untested chief mate who was disgraced by yielding to panic in a crisis, so he spends the rest of his life in a vain effort to redeem his honor in his own eyes.
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ANNOTATION: At the age of 34, the English poet published this autobiography, with much attention to his service with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in World War I.
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ANNOTATION: A Harvard economist appraises the effects of prosperity on the United States and international economic and social systems, maintaining that an over-production of goods and an under-investment of people is responsible for inflation and recession.
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ANNOTATION: The adventures of Mole, Water Rat, Badger, bumptious Mr. Toad, and other animals who live along the river and in the woods.
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ANNOTATION: The life of African American religious leader Malcolm X (1925-1965). The author describes his boyhood in Lansing, Michigan, street life in Harlem, conversion to the Black Muslim movement while imprisoned for robbery, and evolution into a high-profile spokesman for black dignity, power, and separatism. Foreword by Alex Haley.
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ANNOTATION: Critical examination of the Victorian era as seen through the lives of four prominent figures of that age: an ecclesiastic, a woman of action, an educator, and an adventurer.
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ANNOTATION: Follows two black sisters–Nettie, a missionary, and Celie, raped by her father and married to a cruel man. Nettie's letters do not reach Celie, and Celie's shame is so great that she writes only to God. Anniversary edition includes Walker's 1992 preface.
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ANNOTATION: Volume I of “The Second World War” series covers the period from 1919 to 1939 and includes chapters on the mistakes of the Allies after World War I, the rise and rearmament of European dictatorships, and the failure to preserve Austria and uphold Czechoslovakia.
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ANNOTATION: Volume II of 'The Second World War' series describes the problems confronted by Churchill as he assumes the office of Prime Minister in 1940. Covers the battle for France, the tragic story of Dunkirk, the rebuilding of the British army, and the victorious Africa campaign ending at Tobruk.
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ANNOTATION: Volume III of “The Second World War” series covers the military operations of the critical year of 1941, with the attack on Russia by Germany and America's entry into the war.
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ANNOTATION: Volume IV of “The Second World War” series covers the period from 1942 to 1943. Describes the events leading to the invasion of Sicily, warfare in Africa, the reconquest of Europe, meetings with Roosevelt, and efforts at collaboration with Stalin.
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ANNOTATION: Volume V of “The Second World War” series focuses on the conflict from June 1943 to June 1944. Aided by the command of the ocean, mastery of the U-boats, and growing superiority in the air, the Allies are able to conquer Sicily and invade Italy.
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ANNOTATION: Volume VI, the concluding volume of 'The Second World War' series covers the military campaigns ending in the defeat of Germany and Japan, the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, President Roosevelt's death, and the beginnings of peace negotiations.