Dover Thrift Editions
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Civil War Stories
by Ambrose Bierce
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
Sixteen dark and vivid selections by a great satirist and short-story writer. "A Horseman in the Sky," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "Chickamauga," "A Son of the Gods," "What I Saw of Shiloh," "Four Days in Dixie," and 10 more. Masterly tales offer excellent examples of Bierce's dark pessimism and storytelling power.
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The Popol Vuh
by Lewis Spence
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
Transcribed from the original Mayan hieroglyphs, the Popol Vuh relates the mythology and history of the Kiché people of the Guatemalan Highlands of Central America. As is often the case with ancient texts, the Popol Vuh's significance lies in the scarcity of early accounts of Mesoamerican cultures, largely due to the purging of documents by the Spanish conquistadors. Today there remains no document of greater importance to the study of pre-Columbian mythology.
This text of the Popol Vuh - which is translated variously as "Book of the Community," "Book of Counsel," or, more literally, "Book of the People" - begins as pure mythology and gradually develops into pure history, progressing from heroic legends to the deeds of authentic historical figures. It tells of the gods who created mankind, as well as a great flood and other stories with intriguing parallels to the myths of different cultures. This edition features the classic translation by the distinguished folklorist Lewis Spence.
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The Gay Science
by Friedrich Nietzsche
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Although dour in appearance and formidable in reputation, Friedrich Nietzsche was an ardent practitioner of the art of poetry-known in twelfth-century Provençal as "the gay science." This extensive collection of prose and verse offers a sophisticated treatment of the philosophical themes and views central to his thinking, as well as the ideas that proved most influential to later philosophers.
Dating from the era when Nietzsche was at the peak of his intellectual powers, most of this book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the rest of it five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. Zarathustra makes his first appearance in these pages, along with the author's well-known proclamation of the death of God. Readers will find this volume a wellspring for some of Nietzsche's most sustained and thought-provoking discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience, and the origin of logic, as well as the largest collection of Nietzsche's published poetry.
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Selections from the Journals
by Henry David Thoreau
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
Noted Thoreau scholar offers rich selection of favorite excerpts from voluminous Journals. Masterly meditations on man, society, nature and many other subjects-expressed with verve and vigor in some of the most poetic prose in American literature. Perfect introduction to the great naturalist and his thought. Introduction.
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The Professor's House
by Willa Cather
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This bittersweet tale begins when the successful Professor Godfrey St. Peter and his wife move into a comfortable new house. On the eve of the move, Godfrey analyzes his life, family, and friends: his two daughters' marriages have removed them from the home, and the loss of his most outstanding student (and once son-in-law to be) leaves him feeling without purpose. His desire to stay in his old study and cling to what used to be sparks deep introspection in a story that explores a mid-life crisis and family life in a 1920s Midwestern college town.
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The Lady with the Dog and Other Love Stories
by Anton Chekhov
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A master playwright and short story writer, Anton Chekhov is revered for his ability to examine the social forces in his characters' lives. His virtuosity with the written word is on full display in this collection of his best stories, which explore the euphoria and despair inherent in the process of falling and being in love. Eleven stories, including "A Misfortune," "Verochka," "About Love," and "The Lady with the Dog," offer readers a unique view into one of the most universal human experiences.
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An Enemy of the People
by Henrik Ibsen
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An Enemy of the People addresses the irrational tendencies of the masses, and the hypocritical and corrupt nature of the political system that they support. It is the story of one brave man's struggle to do the right thing and speak the truth in the face of extreme social intolerance.
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Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
by William Blake
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As both painter and poet, William Blake (1757-1827) was a powerful and visionary artist whose two early collections of poetry, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, contain memorable lyric verses embodying the emerging spirit of Romanticism. The two works were published together in 1794 with the subtitle, "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul." The poems of Songs of Innocence describe childhood states of naturalness and purity in delicately beautiful lyrics that reveal a child's unspoiled and beatific view of life and human nature. In Songs of Experience the mood and tone darken, the poems suggesting the bitter corruptions and disillusionment that await the innocent. The contrast between the two sets of lyrics is perhaps at its most acute in the poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," the latter ultimately expressing wonderment at the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of good and evil. The full texts of all the poems in the 1794 edition of both collections are included in this volume.
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Dover Reader
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Knighted for his service as a field doctor during the Boer War, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) is best remembered as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. In addition to his ever-popular tales of the Baker Street sleuth, Conan Doyle wrote many works of history and science fiction, as well as plays, poetry, and stories that reflected his interest in the occult. This anthology offers an excellent selection of tales from throughout the Scottish author's career. Sherlock Holmes's adventures include the novels The Hound of the Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet, plus the stories "The Final Problem" and "A Scandal in Bohemia." The Lost World introduces the dinosaur-hunting Professor Challenger, and a duo of supernatural thrillers features "The Ring of Thoth" and "The Los Amigos Fiasco."
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Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey
by Marcus Garvey
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A controversial figure in the history of race relations around the world, Marcus Garvey amazed his enemies as much as he dazzled his admirers. This anthology contains some of the African-American rights advocate's most noted writings and speeches, including "Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World" and "Africa for the Africans."
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The Logic of the Moral Sciences
by John Stuart Mill
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John Stuart Mill (1806—73) was the most influential English philosopher of the nineteenth century. His vast intellectual output covered a range of subjects - traditional philosophy and logic, economics, political science - and included this work, a founding document in the area now known as social science.
In The Logic of the Moral Sciences, Mill applied his considerable talents to examining how the study of human behavior, society, and history could be established on a rational, philosophical basis. The philosopher maintains that casual empiricism and direct experiment are not applicable to the study of complex social phenomena. Instead, "empirical laws," drawn from historical generalizations, must be derivable from a deductive science of human nature. Mills' insights and approaches have remained relevant in the century and a half since this treatise's publication. This volume will prove of vital interest to historians of philosophy and the social sciences as well as to undergraduate social science majors.
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The Poems of Rupert Brooke
by Rupert Brooke
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The poetry of Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) remains memorable for its charming lyrical quality and the way in which his sonnets perfectly recapture the mood of England at the start of World War I. This volume reprints his complete oeuvre, from the early lyric poems to those written shortly before his premature death: "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," "Tiare Tahiti," "The Great Lover," "The Dead," "The Soldier," and many others.
Brooke enlisted in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the war in 1914 and entered the literary scene early the following year, when two of his sonnets ("The Dead" and "The Soldier") appeared in London's Times Literary Supplement.
The 27-year-old poet died shortly afterward aboard a ship bound for Gallipoli. His 1914 and Other Poems was published immediately afterward to wide acclaim. Brooke remains among Britain's best-loved cultural figures, and his works evoke the tranquility of prewar life and the ideals of heroic self-sacrifice.
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Herman Melville
by Herman Melville
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Despite the early success of his tales of adventure in the South Seas, Herman Melville (1819–1891) suffered a reversal of fortunes with the 1851 publication of Moby-Dick. The great epic, now recognized as a masterpiece, was scorned by an uncomprehending nineteenth-century audience. Melville's preoccupation with metaphysical and philosophical issues and his use of symbols and archetypes foreshadowed elements of latter-day literature, and modern readers rejoice in his groundbreaking explorations of timeless questions. Along with excerpts from Moby-Dick, this anthology presents the complete text of Melville's classic of travel and adventure literature, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Additional features include the short stories "Bartleby the Scrivener," "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids," and "The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles."
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My Inventions and Other Writing and Lectures
by Nikola Tesla
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This volume presents one of the richest and most comprehensive collections of writings by Nikolai Tesla, a founding figure of the modern electrical power industry and long-time rival of Thomas Edison. Included is Tesla's autobiography, My Inventions, and the lengthy philosophical essay "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy: With Special Reference to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy," as well as a series of lectures: "A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers," "On Electricity," and more.
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The Weary Blues
by Langston Hughes
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The Weary Blues is Langston Hughes's first published collection of poems, immediately celebrated as a tour de force upon its release. Over ninety years after its publication, it remains a critically acclaimed literary work and still evokes a fresh, contemporary feeling and offers a powerful reflection of the Black experience. From the title poem "The Weary Blues," echoing the sounds of the blues, to "Dream Variation," ringing with joyfulness, to the "Epilogue" that mimics Walt Whitman in its opening line, "I, too, sing America," Hughes writes clearly and colorfully, and his words remain prophetic and relevant today.
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Six Characters in Search of an Author
by Luigi Pirandello
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This 1921 intellectual comedy contrasts illusion with reality by introducing 6 individuals to a bare stage occupied by actors in rehearsal. Proclaiming themselves the incomplete creations of an author's imagination, the 6 demand dialog for the story of their lives. A classic dramatic exploration of the many faces of reality. Publisher's Note.
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Snake and Other Poems
by David Herbert 'D. H.' Lawrence
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Best known as the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover and Women In Love, D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) also wrote some of the twentieth century's finest poetry. Lawrence is noted for his use of words in a richly textured manner that produces vivid images and expresses deep emotion. This ample collection of his verse covers a wide thematic range, including love, marriage, family, class, art, and culture, all treated with extraordinary exuberance, intensity, sensitivity, and occasional humor. These selections originally appeared in Love Poems and Others (1913), Amores (1916), Look! We Have Come Through! (1917), Tortoises (1921), and such periodicals as The Dial and English Review. In addition to the celebrated title poem, individual works include "A Collier's Wife," "Monologue of a Mother," "Quite Forsaken," "Wedlock," "Fireflies in the Corn," "New Heaven and Earth," and many others.
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Infamous Speeches
From Robespierre to Osama bin Laden
by Bob Blaisdell
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This anthology comprises some of history's most hateful public addresses, consisting of speeches invoking racism, genocide, anti-Semitism, terrorism, and other extreme views. Selections range from an oration by Robespierre during the Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution to Osama bin Laden's threats related to the terrorist actions of 9/11. Additional speeches include Andrew Jackson's Seventh Annual Message to Congress in 1835, promoting the Indian Removal Act; Jefferson Davis' 1861 announcement of Southern secession; and Joseph R. McCarthy's "Wheeling" speech of 1950, in which the senator claimed knowledge of Communist loyalists within the U. S. government. Other speakers include Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse-Tung, and Stalin. Each speech features a brief introduction that places it in historical context.
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She Stoops to Conquer
by Oliver Goldsmith
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Charming satire of the sentimental comedies of the day has entertained audiences since 1773. A young lady poses as a serving girl to win the heart of a young gentleman too shy to court ladies of his own class. Many delightful deceits, hilarious turns of plot must be played out before the play concludes happily. Notes.
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Selected Poems
by Emily Dickinson
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
Over 100 best-known, best-loved poems by one of America's foremost poets, reprinted from authoritative early editions. "The Snake," "Hope," "The Chariot," many more, display unflinching honesty, psychological penetration, and technical adventurousness that have delighted and impressed generations of poetry lovers. No comparable edition at this price. Index of first lines.
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Slave Narratives of the Underground Railroad
by Christine Rudisel
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During the 1850s and 1860s more than 100,000 people escaped slavery in the American South by following the Underground Railroad, a complex network of secret routes and safe houses. This inexpensive compilation of firsthand accounts offers authentic insights into the Civil War era and African-American history with compelling narratives by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and lesser-known refugees. Thirty selections include the story of Eliza Harris, "The Slave Woman Who Crossed the Ohio River on the Drifting Ice with Her Child in Her Arms," whose experience inspired a memorable scene in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Other accounts include that of Henry "Box" Brown, who hid in a crate mailed to Philadelphia abolitionists; Theophilus Collins's escape after "A Desperate, Bloody Struggle-Gun, Knife and Fire Shovel, Used by Infuriated Master"; excerpts from Harriet Jacobs's 1861 narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; and the remarkable flight of William and Ellen Craft, "Female Slave in Male Attire, Fleeing as a Planter, with Her Husband as Her Body Servant."
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Female Abolitionists
by Various Authors
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A Dover Original, this collection of essays, letters, poems, and speeches by the bold women who joined the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century will educate and inspire all who are interested in this era of American history. The collection includes the work of 26 remarkable women whose efforts, at great risk to their own safety, became instrumental in fighting slavery, including Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Mary Prince, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Tubman, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, and more.
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Sentimental Education
by Gustave Flaubert
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"I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation-or, more accurately, the history of their feelings," declared Gustave Flaubert, who envisioned "a book about love, about passion; but passion such as can exist nowadays-that is to say, inactive." First published in 1869, this novel fulfills Flaubert's conception with a realistic, ironic portrait of bourgeois lives played out against France's tumultuous revolution of 1848 and the founding of its Second Empire. Frédéric Moreau, a law student in Paris, dreams of achieving success in art, business, journalism, and politics. His aspirations take a romantic turn upon a chance encounter with a married woman, who inspires a lifelong obsession. Frédéric befriends his idol's husband, an influential art dealer, and quickly finds himself seduced by society life-and bedeviled by financial problems, ideological conflicts, and betrayals of trust. Blending romance, historical authenticity, and satire, Flaubert's Sentimental Education ranks among the nineteenth century's great novels.
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Sons and Lovers
by David Herbert 'D. H.' Lawrence
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Torn between his passion for two women and his abiding attachment to his mother, young Paul Morel struggles with his desire to please everyone ― particularly himself. Lawrence's highly autobiographical novel unfolds against the backdrop of his native Nottinghamshire coal fields, amidst a working-class family dominated by a brutish father and a loving but overbearing mother. Lushly descriptive passages range from celebrations of natural beauty and sensual pleasures to searing indictments of the social blight engendered by industrialism. Essential reading for any study of 20th-century literature. Unabridged reprint of the classic 1913 edition.
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A Child's History of England
by Charles Dickens
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From the mysterious Druids and noble King Alfred to the notorious Henry VIII and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Charles Dickens traced his country's history for the benefit of young Victorians. Written with the beloved storyteller's customary panache, this series of historical vignettes reads like a fast-paced novel, rich in anecdotes and colorful stories. Dickens' unsparing, witty, and opinionated perspectives on the great pageant of English history also offer insights into his own political and religious attitudes.
This lively narrative was dedicated by the author to his children, in hopes of whetting their appetites for more substantial works of history. The book was included in the curricula of British schoolchildren well into the twentieth century, and it remains a treat for all ages. Alice Munro remembered it fondly as "the first glimpse I ever had of history, before I knew what history was ... the whole story has the charm and recklessness and exaggeration of a spellbinding fairy tale."
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Selected Writings
by Alexander Hamilton
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This concise collection of the Founding Father's public and private writings provides an introduction to his life, personality, political career, and influence on the early history of the United States. Contents include Hamilton's political essays, selections from the Federalist Papers, First Report on the Public Credit and Report on a National Bank, and personal correspondence with his wife, friends, and political colleagues.
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Tulips & Chimneys
by E. E. Cummings
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Edward Estlin Cummings (1894–1962), a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Harvard University graduate, is best known for his rejection of traditional poetic forms. As e. e. cummings, he conducted radical experiments with spelling, syntax, and punctuation that inspired a revolution in twentieth-century literary expression and excited the admiration and affection of poetry lovers of all ages. With his 1923 debut, Tulips & Chimneys, the 25-year-old poet rattled the conservative literary scene, directing his avant-garde approach to the traditional subjects of love, life, time, and beauty. His playful treatment of punctuation and language adds enduring zest to such popular and oft-anthologized poems as "All in green went my love riding," "in Just-," "Tumbling-hair," "O sweet spontaneous," "Buffalo Bill's," and "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls." This edition presents complete and textually accurate editions of Cummings's work, in keeping with the original manuscripts and the poet's intentions.
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Selected Poems
by Lord Byron
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Richly varied in mood and content, this collection captures the essence of Byron's great poetic achievement. Among the 31 selections: convivial song-like poems, love poems, travel poems, humorous and satiric poems. Included are shorter works such as the famous "She Walks in Beauty," "Stanzas to Augusta" and "So We'll Go No More a Roving," as well as longer works: "The Prisoner of Chillon," "Beppo," and "The Vision of Judgment," all unabridged. Also here are lyrics excerpted from Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the play Manfred. Explanatory footnotes.
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Suspiria de Profundis
by Thomas De Quincey
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A legal and readily available painkiller in the nineteenth century, laudanum was a source of both pleasure and pain for author Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859). After achieving overnight success with Confessions of an English Opium Eater, an impassioned account of his struggles with addiction, the author wrote the hypnotic prose poems of Suspiria de Profundis ("Sighs from the Depths"). Like Confessions, these short essays combined drug-induced visions with thought-provoking reflections on the nature of dreams, memory, and imagination.
With these books, De Quincey inaugurated the genre of addiction literature, a tradition furthered by Charles Baudelaire, William S. Burroughs, and a growing number of modern writers. Suspiria de Profundis continues to influence contemporary artists with the best known of its psychological fantasies, "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow," which centers on myths related to the Roman goddess of childbirth and was the source for the classic 1977 horror film Suspiria and its 2018 remake.
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Bulfinch's Medieval Mythology
by Thomas Bulfinch
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Here, in a dazzling panoply, are the legendary figures from the age of chivalry: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, Richard the Lionhearted and his crusaders, and a host of other famous and lesser-known characters. This collection includes tales from Camelot, dramatic narratives from The Mabinogion, and stories of the noble warriors of English history. Bulfinch's skillful storytelling not only relates these ancient myths and legends but also discusses their roles in literature and art, with numerous allusions to poetry and paintings. Generations of children and adults have thrilled to these timeless tales, and young readers can find no better introduction to the enchantment of medieval myths and legends.
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Off on a Comet!
by Jules Verne
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Nearly a century before space travel captured the imaginations of science-fiction writers and readers, Jules Verne envisioned an incident in which a comet impact in the vicinity of Gibraltar sends a piece of the Earth on a two-year trip around the solar system. Thirty-six unsuspecting individuals of various nationalities are swept away by the collision. The tension builds as they struggle to understand what has happened and to cope with their new environment. The involuntary travelers are forced to put aside their differences to survive in an increasingly frigid atmosphere and to try to find their way home.
Verne's passion for travel and his interest in space exploration are reflected in this rollicking adventure, which is further elevated by his gift for creating a dramatic narrative and realistic personalities. This edition of Off on a Comet! features illustrations from the original French publication that complement the author's droll observations of his contemporaries' superstitions and foibles.
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We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
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This classic Russian dystopian novel inspired George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and many other science fiction writers, and now this reprint of the original 1924 translation of We is available at Dover. Set in a future under a unified totalitarian state, in a society ruled by conformity and humans are identified by their assigned number, spaceship engineer D-503 must face his beliefs about the One Party head on after a chance encounter with the beautiful and dissident I-330. It's a page-turning adventure that has a home on any science fiction fan's bookshelf.
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Master Humphrey's Clock
by Charles Dickens
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A lonely old man in early nineteenth-century London hits upon the idea of inviting acquaintances over to read their manuscripts together. The friends gather one night a week between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., and with the formation of their fictional literary club, Charles Dickens launched Master Humphrey's Clock, a weekly periodical that he published from 1840 to 1841.
Recounted with the author's customary flair for humor and pathos, the tales range from the confessions of a child murderer and an account of a rebel's secret burial to lighthearted exchanges between a pair of talking statues. This collection marked Dickens' establishment of characters from his forthcoming novels The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge. He also reintroduced popular personalities from The Pickwick Papers, adding Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller, and Mr. Weller to the narrators. Generations of readers have delighted in the warmth and humanity of these lesser-known tales by a master storyteller.
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The World Crisis, Volume I
1911-1914
by Sir Winston Churchill
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Best known as the Prime Minister who guided Britain through World War II, Winston Churchill also played an active role in the preceding war, during which he served as his country's First Lord of the Admiralty and the leader of its aerial defense. After masterminding the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, he resigned from the government and sought to rehabilitate his reputation by serving with the army on the Western Front. Before and after World War I, Churchill wrote several books that remain popular with students and historians.
Written with his customary flair and enriched by his firsthand knowledge of events, Churchill's The World Crisis series remains the greatest history of World War I. This unabridged first volume vividly recounts the status of the world's nations at the war's outbreak, It traces the international tensions over the Balkan states that triggered the conflict as well as the arms race between the British and German navies.
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The Power of Darkness
A Drama in Five Acts
by Leo Tolstoy
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Best known today as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Count Leo Tolstoy also is acknowledged as a skilled playwright. His five-act drama The Power of Darkness offers a cold and unsparing look at Russian peasant life that illustrates the costs of pursuing personal desires rather than the dictates of morality. The grimly realistic tragedy is based on a real incident, centering on a peasant's confession to a party of wedding guests of his participation in a series of horrific crimes that range from adultery and murder to infanticide. Tolstoy's moving portrait of a class enslaved by poverty and ignorance was written in 1886, but its performance was suppressed by Russian authorities until 1902. A 1904 version, performed in New York in Yiddish, marked the first successful production of a play by Tolstoy in the United States.
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The King of Elfland's Daughter
by Lord Dunsany
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One of the most influential and acclaimed works in all of fantasy literature, this captivating tale is the forerunner of modern sword and sorcery novels. It tells of a young lord's quest through a supernatural world in search of a fairy princess bride, recounting the lovers' romance, separation, and reunion. Rich in metaphor, vivid in imagery, the lyrical storytelling evokes a sense of innocent wonder. Its fans range from W. B. Yeats, who wrote that Dunsany "had transfigured with beauty the common sights of the world," to Arthur C. Clarke, who felt that the novel helped elevate the author to "one of the greatest writers of this century."
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The Professor
by Charlotte Brontë
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Orphaned in his boyhood, William Crimsworth was sent to Eton by aristocratic relatives who withdrew their support when he declined to become a clergyman. After a disastrous attempt to join his estranged brother's business, William trades his Yorkshire clerkship for a teaching position at a Belgian boarding school. His loneliness is brightened by a beguiling headmistress, but her sensuous appeal complicates his attraction to a penniless girl who is both a student and teacher.
Although published posthumously, The Professor was written before Jane Eyre and Charlotte Brontë's other novels. Readers may recognize the book's autobiographical elements, which - like Villette - center on a love-starved English teacher at a Brussels school. In this case, however, the protagonist is a man, many of whose problems - workplace drudgery, social and romantic isolation - are similar to those of middle-class Victorian women. Brontë's moving portrayal of a social outsider's perspective adds interest to this showcase of her developing style and talent.
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Selected Poems
by Claude McKay
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Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay (1889–1948) came to the U.S. in 1912 and became an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. This inexpensive edition includes a representative sample of his Jamaican dialect verse, but concentrates on poems from Harlem Shadows (1922) and uncollected verse. Edited and with an introduction by Joan R. Sherman.
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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Puritan Sermons
by Jonathan Edwards
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A sermon preached by Jonathan Edwards to his Enfield, Connecticut, congregation in July 1741, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is particularly noted for its vivid descriptions of the torments of Hell and mankind's natural depravity. At the same time, it was also an appeal to man's need for salvation and a reminder of the agonies that awaited the unreformed. Coming during the height of the Great Awakening--a period of religious fervor in the first half of the eighteenth century--the homily was at once regarded by many as the greatest ever given on American soil and vehemently attacked by others as puritanical "fire and brimstone." One thing seems certain: it made a lasting impact on American Christianity. Accompanying this landmark document are sermons by nine other influential Puritans of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, among them Thomas Shepard's "The Parable of the Ten Virgins," Cotton Mather's "An Hortatory and Necessary Address," John Cotton's "The Way of Life," as well as sermons by John Winthrop, Increase Mather, Jonathan Mayhew, Thomas Hooker, Peter Bulkeley, and Samuel Willard. Enlightening and thought-provoking, the volume will serve as primary source material in many American history and literature courses.
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Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics
by William L. Riordon
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This classic work presents the candid wit and wisdom of George Washington Plunkitt (1842—1924), a longtime state senator from New York who represented the Fifteenth Assembly District and was especially powerful in New York City. Plunkitt was part of the city's Tammany Hall organization and a cynical practitioner of what today is generally known as "machine politics," a patronage-based system in which politicians openly exercise power for personal gain.
Plunkitt defined "dishonest graft" as working solely for one's own interests, as opposed to "honest graft," which involves the interests of one's party and state as well as individual benefits. An enthusiastic party man, he believed in appointments, patronage, spoils, and all the corrupt practices that were curtailed by the civil service law, regarding them as both the rewards and cause of patriotism. Modern readers will find his strikingly modern-sounding motivations and justifications both entertaining and instructive.
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Songs for the Open Road
Poems of Travel and Adventure
by Various Authors
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Collection of more than 80 poems by 50 American and British masters celebrates travel, adventure and the many real and metaphorical journeys each of us take in the course of our lives. Works by Whitman, Byron, Millay, Sandburg, Service, Bliss Carman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Shelley, Tennyson, Yeats, many others. Note.
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Zadig and Other Stories
by Voltaire
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Best known as the author of the satirical novel Candide, Voltaire also wrote other highly regarded works of philosophical fiction. With the title tale of this original collection of short stories, the author addresses the social and political problems of his own day in an ancient Babylonian setting. First published in 1747, "Zadig" makes no attempt at historical accuracy. Instead, its thinly veiled references to contemporary issues challenge eighteenth-century religious orthodoxy by portraying life's vicissitudes as the product of destiny rather than individual choices.
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Lady Susan, Sanditon and The Watsons
by Jane Austen
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
This volume presents three of Jane Austen's smaller works, treating readers to the author's timeless observations on life and love in nineteenth-century England. In Lady Susan, a beautiful and flirtatious widow seeks an advantageous second marriage for herself while attempting to push her daughter into a dismal match. Through a series of crafty maneuvers, Susan pursues her schemes by filling her calendar with invitations for extended visits with unsuspecting relatives and acquaintances. Characters are revealed and suspense builds as the plot unfolds through a series of letters.
The beloved author also left behind two tantalizing unfinished novels. The Watsons takes place in a familiar domestic milieu, in which a spirited heroine finds her marriage opportunities narrowed by poverty and pride. Sanditon ventures into new territory amid hypochondriacs and speculators at a seaside resort. More than literary curiosities, these stories are worthy of reading for pleasure as well as for study.
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The Essence of Progress and Poverty
by Henry George
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
In this concise text, the distinguished American philosopher John Dewey compiled excerpts from the massive Progress and Poverty to provide those unfamiliar with Henry George's work with the essence of the author's thinking on economics. In his Foreword, Dewey noted, "It would require less than the fingers of the two hands to enumerate those who from Plato down rank with [George]. No man, no graduate of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself as an educated man in social thought unless he has some first-hand acquaintance with the theoretical contribution of this great American thinker."
Fifteen brief chapters feature passages from George's highly influential book and examine why poverty persists throughout periods of economic and technological progress as well as the basis for economic cycles of boom and bust.
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Short Story Masterpieces by American Women Writers
by Clarence C. Strowbridge
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
Fourteen short works of fiction by noteworthy American women authors offer entrancing tales of redemption, betrayal, tradition, and rebellion. Dating from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, these narratives range in mood from "Heat," Joyce Carol Oates's chilling tale of murder, to "Why I Live at the P.O.," Eudora Welty's comic monologue in the Southern Gothic tradition. Other contributors include Flannery O'Connor, Kate Chopin, and Edna Ferber as well as lesser-known, newly rediscovered writers. Edith Wharton examines the issue of divorce and remarriage in "The Other Two," and Willa Cather explores life among Greenwich Village artists at the turn of the twentieth century in "Coming, Aphrodite!" Stories with modern settings include Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," an insightful look at the role of heritage in African-American culture, and Louise Erdrich's "The Shawl," a meditation on memory and the transformation of old stories into new ones. Together, the tales offer a revealing panorama of perspectives on women's ongoing struggles for dignity and self-sufficiency.
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In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
Hemingway made his North American literary debut in 1925 with In Our Time, his first collection of short stories and vignettes. Widely praised at the time for what later would be considered the author's hallmark style-uncomplicated, precise language with an eye for realism-the stories' themes of alienation, loss, and grief continue the work Hemingway began earlier in his career. Includes two of his best-known Nick Adams stories: "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River."
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The Most Dangerous Game and Other Stories of Adventure
by Richard Connell
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
Readers seeking exotic locales and nonstop pulse-pounding thrills will love this collection of six classic adventure stories, beginning with The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, one of the best-known short stories, about a hunt designed for very specific prey. Other timeless tales include To Build a Fire by Jack London, The Caballero's Way by O. Henry, The Seed from the Sepulchre by Clark Ashton Smith, Alone in Shark Waters by John Kruse, and The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling.
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The Use and Abuse of History
by Friedrich Nietzsche
Part of the Dover Thrift Editions series
"While life needs the services of history, it must just as clearly be comprehended that an excess measure of history will do harm to the living," declares Friedrich Nietzsche in this cautionary polemic. The iconoclastic philosopher warns us about the dangers of an uncritical devotion to the study of the past, which leads to destructive and limiting
results - particularly in cases where long-ago events are exploited for nationalistic purposes.
Nietzsche proposes three approaches to times gone by: the monumental, focusing on examples of human greatness; the antiquarian, involving immersion in a bygone period; and the critical, rejecting the old in favor of the new. He examines the pros and cons of each concept, favoring how the ancient Greeks looked at things, which balanced a consciousness of yesteryear with contemporary intellectual, cultural, and political sensibilities. Nietzsche's emphasis on history as a dynamic, living culture rather than the subject of detached scholarship is certain to resonate with modern readers.