Relationships within the Pontifex family reflect the hypocrisy of middle-class life in Victorian England. Butler's novel satirizes Victorian hypocrisy in its chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex. Along the way, it offers a powerful indictment of 19th-century England's major institutions. Beginning with the life of John Pontifex, a carpenter, the novel traces four generations of the Pontifex family, each of which perpetuates the frustration...

When the Countess Ellen Olenska returns from Europe, fleeing her brutish husband, her rebellious independence and passionate awareness of life stir the educated sensitivity of Newland Archer, already engaged to be married to her cousin May Welland, "that terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything." As the consequent drama unfolds, Edith Wharton's sharp ironic wit...

"On the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I: a hardcover edition of the classic tale of a young German soldier's harrowing experiences in the trenches, widely acclaimed as the greatest war novel of all time. When twenty-year-old Paul Baumer and his classmates enlist in the German army during World War I, they are full of youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught to believe in shatters under...

"The Pilgrim's Progress (Part I 1678/Part II 1684) holds a unique place in the history of English literature. No other seventeenth-century work except the King James Bible, nothing from the pen of a writer of Bunyan's social class in any period, and no other Christian work, has enjoyed such an extensive readership." "The pilgrim Christian, Mr Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair, Hopeful, and Ignorance are engaged in a powerful drama set against a solidly...

An edited and abridged version of Alexis de Tocqueville's study of the United States, written in 1831 when the democracy was still young, encompassing the history, geography, politics, legal system, economy, and culture of America, and addressing issues such as a free press and racism that are still pertinent in the twenty-first century.

A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. In the story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched...

One of Lawrence's most popular novels, this fascinating and disturbing sequel to The Rainbow depicts the emotional life of the Brangwen sisters. Set just after World War I, this prophetic masterpiece is filled with perceptions about sexual powers and sexual obsession now held to be timeless and true.