He was Sam Clemens, steamboat pilot, before he was Mark Twain, famous author. His better-known name originated with the lingo of navigation, and much of his writing was informed by his shipboard adventures on one of the world's great rivers. In this classic of American literature, Twain offers lively recollections ranging from his salad days as a novice pilot to views from the passenger deck in the twilight of the river culture's heyday. Under the...

"Describes life at sea in the 1830's from the viewpoint of a common sailor in the American merchant service." --

Abjuring the city for a pastoral life, a group of utopians set out to reform a dissipated America. But the group is a powerful mix of competing ambitions and its idealism finds little satisfaction in farmwork. Instead, of changing the world, the members of the Blithedale community individually pursue egotistical paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Hawthorne's tale both mourns and satirizes a rural idyll not unlike that of nineteenth-century America...

In the most seminal slave narrative ever written, Frederick Douglass writes, "From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom." Reading this narrative is to witness...

"This is a novel about racial identity set in New York in 1929. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga and Alexander SkarsgAArd. Irene Redfield, married to a successful physician, enjoys a comfortable life in Harlem, New York. Reluctantly, she renews her friendship with old school friend, Clare Kendry. Clare, who like Irene is light skinned, apassesaTM as white and is married to a racist white man who has no idea about...

Provides a detailed picture of what life in the slums of New York was like, how the slums were created, how and why they remained as they were, who was forced to live there, and offers suggestions for easing the lot of the poor.

Henry David Thoreau built his small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in 1845. For the next two years he lived there as simply as possible, seeking "the essential facts of life" and learning to eliminate the unnecessary details-material and spiritual-that intrude upon our happiness. He described his experiences in Walden, using vivid, forceful prose that transforms his reflections on nature into richly evocative metaphors to live by. George Eliot's...

"For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role...

Presents fifteen essays and addresses by nineteenth-century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, including such important works as "Self-Reliance," "The Over-Soul," and "Nature."

Professor N. Bruce Duthu, J.D., is an internationally recognized scholar on Native American issues. In American Indians and the Law, he highlights the major events, the differing principles, and the evolving perspectives that have governed relations among the Indian tribes, the federal government, and the states.