PROMETHEUS

(P/B) THE SCARLET LETTER

(P/B) THE TURN OF THE SCREW

(P/B) EUREKA

PHANTASMAGORIA
Mathematician and author Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) has delighted millions with his most widely regarded book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Known for pointing out the absurdities of life in his fiction and poetry, Carroll (a pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) took paranormal belief to the extreme in the satirical poem Phantasmagoria, the humorous story of an annoying ghost that is assigned to haunt a new house. While the owner wishes the ghost would simply leave, the ghost politely informs the man of the many types of specters and...
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(P/B) THE STAR ROVER
Novelist and short story writer Jack London (1876-1916) contemplated the strange theory of astral travel, penning The Star Rover in 1914. The last of London's fifty books, which include White Fang and The Call of the Wild, The Star Rover centers on San Quentin prison inmate Darrell Standing, a former university professor who is serving a life sentence for murdering a colleague. To escape the tortures of his confinement, he withdraws into dreams of past lives in which he experiences what he calls his "eternal recurrence on earth." Thus the ...
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HEREDITARY GENIUS

THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS

THE WISDOM OF LIFE AND COUNSELS AND MAXIMS

(P/B) EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN
Twain's witty vision of what heaven "is really like" is told from the point of view of the recently deceased Captain Stormfield. In a folksy narration peppered with sailor's jargon, the amiable, altogether down-to-earth merchant marine describes a series of amusingly disconcerting revelations about the next world. Sitting on a cloud strumming a harp all day turns out to be insufferably boring; being eternally youthful also has its drawbacks when the captain finds himself not mixing well with a crowd of insipid teenagers; and Native America...
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(P/B) THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG
This collection of lesser-known little gems by Mark Twain begins with a witty account of a fictional town called Hadleyburg, which prides itself on its long untarnished tradition of incorruptible citizens. One day someone in the town offends a stranger passing through and he vows to take revenge by plotting an elaborate scheme to show the whole nation just how corruptible this sanctimonious bastion of virtue really is. Through a series of cleverly placed letters promising a fortune, the insidious outsider lays a trap for each of Hadleyburg...
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BABBITT
In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during America's most prosperous decade before the Great Depression, Sinclair Lewis perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumer materialism that we all take for granted today. With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks George Babbitt's daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man. But beneath the complacent fatade Lewi...
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MAIN STREET
The first of his major novels of the 1920s, Sinclair Lewis's Main Street satirizes the manners of the American Midwest. Here is the story of Carol Kennicott, who, to be accepted, must adapt to the ways of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. This ground-breaking novel attacks conformism, commercialism, moneygrubbing, and the decline in what Lewis saw as the American ideals of freedom and respect for individuality. (From the publisher)...
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THE CONFIDENCE MAN
Poorly received when first published in 1857, The Confidence Man is now considered Herman Melville's "most nearly perfect work," and one that occupies a central place in the American literary tradition of masquerade and trickery. Set on April Fool's Day aboard a Mississippi steamer, this powerful and engaging novel, through the conversations of the confidence man (who may be looked on as the Devil or God), explores America and American values. Part satire, part hoax, The Confidence Man is also a dark look at the nothingness lurking beneath...
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(P/B) EXILES
The only extant play by the great Irish novelist, Exiles is of interest both for its autobiographical content and for formal reasons. In the characters and their circumstances details of Joyce's life are evident. The main character, Richard Rowan, the moody, tormented writer who is at odds with both his wife and the parochial Irish society around him, is clearly a portrait of Joyce himself. The character of Rowan's wife, Bertha, is certainly influenced by Joyce's lover and later wife, Nora Barnacle, with whom he left Ireland and lived a se...
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ON LIBERTY

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY